FOUR QUARTETS

T.S. Eliot

"Although logos is common to all, most people live

as if they had a wisdom of their own."

                             1. p.77. Fr.2

"The way upward and the way downward are the same."

                             1. p.89. Fr.60

Diels: Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (Herakleitos)

BURNT NORTON

I

Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future,

And time future contained in time past.

If all time is eternally present

All time is unredeemable.

What might have been is an abstraction

Remaining a perpetual possibility

Only in a world of speculation.

What might have been and what has been

Point to one end, which is always present.

Footfalls echo in the memory

Down the passage which we did not take

Towards the door we never opened

Into the rose-garden. My words echo

Thus, in your mind.

                              But to what purpose

Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves

I do not know.

                        Other echoes

Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?

Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,

Round the corner. Through the first gate,

Into our first world, shall we follow

The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.

There they were, dignified, invisible,

Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,

In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,

And the bird called, in response to

The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,

And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses

Had the look of flowers that are looked at.

There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting.

So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern,

Along the empty alley, into the box circle,

To look down into the drained pool.

Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged,

And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,

And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,

The surface glittered out of heart of light,

And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.

Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.

Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,

Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.

Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind

Cannot bear very much reality.

Time past and time future

What might have been and what has been

Point to one end, which is always present.

II

Garlic and sapphires in the mud

Clot the bedded axle-tree.

The trilling wire in the blood

Sings below inveterate scars

Appeasing long forgotten wars.

The dance along the artery

The circulation of the lymph

Are figured in the drift of stars

Ascend to summer in the tree

We move above the moving tree

In light upon the figured leaf

And hear upon the sodden floor

Below, the boarhound and the boar

Pursue their pattern as before

But reconciled among the stars.

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;

Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,

But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,

Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,

Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,

There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.

I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.

And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.

The inner freedom from the practical desire,

The release from action and suffering, release from the inner

And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded

By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving,

Erhebung without motion, concentration

Without elimination, both a new world

And the old made explicit, understood

In the completion of its partial ecstasy,

The resolution of its partial horror.

Yet the enchainment of past and future

Woven in the weakness of the changing body,

Protects mankind from heaven and damnation

Which flesh cannot endure.

                                          Time past and time future

Allow but a little consciousness.

To be conscious is not to be in time

But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,

The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,

The moment in the draughty church at smokefall

Be remembered; involved with past and future.

Only through time time is conquered.

III

Here is a place of disaffection

Time before and time after

In a dim light: neither daylight

Investing form with lucid stillness

Turning shadow into transient beauty

With slow rotation suggesting permanence

Nor darkness to purify the soul

Emptying the sensual with deprivation

Cleansing affection from the temporal.

Neither plenitude nor vacancy. Only a flicker

Over the strained time-ridden faces

Distracted from distraction by distraction

Filled with fancies and empty of meaning

Tumid apathy with no concentration

Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind

That blows before and after time,

Wind in and out of unwholesome lungs

Time before and time after.

Eructation of unhealthy souls

Into the faded air, the torpid

Driven on the wind that sweeps the gloomy hills of London,

Hampstead and Clerkenwell, Campden and Putney,

Highgate, Primrose and Ludgate. Not here

Not here the darkness, in this twittering world.

    Descend lower, descend only

Into the world of perpetual solitude,

World not world, but that which is not world,

Internal darkness, deprivation

And destitution of all property,

Desiccation of the world of sense,

Evacuation of the world of fancy,

Inoperancy of the world of spirit;

This is the one way, and the other

Is the same, not in movement

But abstention from movement; while the world moves

In appetency, on its metalled ways

Of time past and time future.

IV

Time and the bell have buried the day,

The black cloud carries the sun away.

Will the sunflower turn to us, will the clematis

Stray down, bend to us; tendril and spray

Clutch and cling?

    Chill

Fingers of yew be curled

Down on us? After the kingfisher's wing

Has answered light to light, and is silent, the light is still

At the still point of the turning world.

V

Words move, music moves

Only in time; but that which is only living

Can only die. Words, after speech, reach

Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern,

Can words or music reach

The stillness, as a Chinese jar still

Moves perpetually in its stillness.

Not the stillness of the violin, while the note lasts,

Not that only, but the co-existence,

Or say that the end precedes the beginning,

And the end and the beginning were always there

Before the beginning and after the end.

And all is always now. Words strain,

Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,

Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,

Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,

Will not stay still. Shrieking voices

Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering,

Always assail them. The Word in the desert

Is most attacked by voices of temptation,

The crying shadow in the funeral dance,

The loud lament of the disconsolate chimera.

    The detail of the pattern is movement,

As in the figure of the ten stairs.

Desire itself is movement

Not in itself desirable;

Love is itself unmoving,

Only the cause and end of movement,

Timeless, and undesiring

Except in the aspect of time

Caught in the form of limitation

Between un-being and being.

Sudden in a shaft of sunlight

Even while the dust moves

There rises the hidden laughter

Of children in the foliage

Quick now, here, now, always—

Ridiculous the waste sad time

Stretching before and after.

EAST COKER

I

In my beginning is my end. In succession

Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,

Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place

Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.

Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires,

Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth

Which is already flesh, fur and faeces,

Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf.

Houses live and die: there is a time for building

And a time for living and for generation

And a time for the wind to break the loosened pane

And to shake the wainscot where the field-mouse trots

And to shake the tattered arras woven with a silent motto.

    In my beginning is my end. Now the light falls

Across the open field, leaving the deep lane

Shuttered with branches, dark in the afternoon,

Where you lean against a bank while a van passes,

And the deep lane insists on the direction

Into the village, in the electric heat

Hypnotised. In a warm haze the sultry light

Is absorbed, not refracted, by grey stone.

The dahlias sleep in the empty silence.

Wait for the early owl.

                                    In that open field

If you do not come too close, if you do not come too close,

On a summer midnight, you can hear the music

Of the weak pipe and the little drum

And see them dancing around the bonfire

The association of man and woman

In daunsinge, signifying matrimonie—

A dignified and commodiois sacrament.

Two and two, necessarye coniunction,

Holding eche other by the hand or the arm

Whiche betokeneth concorde. Round and round the fire

Leaping through the flames, or joined in circles,

Rustically solemn or in rustic laughter

Lifting heavy feet in clumsy shoes,

Earth feet, loam feet, lifted in country mirth

Mirth of those long since under earth

Nourishing the corn. Keeping time,

Keeping the rhythm in their dancing

As in their living in the living seasons

The time of the seasons and the constellations

The time of milking and the time of harvest

The time of the coupling of man and woman

And that of beasts. Feet rising and falling.

Eating and drinking. Dung and death.

    Dawn points, and another day

Prepares for heat and silence. Out at sea the dawn wind

Wrinkles and slides. I am here

Or there, or elsewhere. In my beginning.

II

What is the late November doing

With the disturbance of the spring

And creatures of the summer heat,

And snowdrops writhing under feet

And hollyhocks that aim too high

Red into grey and tumble down

Late roses filled with early snow?

Thunder rolled by the rolling stars

Simulates triumphal cars

Deployed in constellated wars

Scorpion fights against the Sun

Until the Sun and Moon go down

Comets weep and Leonids fly

Hunt the heavens and the plains

Whirled in a vortex that shall bring

The world to that destructive fire

Which burns before the ice-cap reigns.

    That was a way of putting it—not very satisfactory:

A periphrastic study in a worn-out poetical fashion,

Leaving one still with the intolerable wrestle

With words and meanings. The poetry does not matter.

It was not (to start again) what one had expected.

What was to be the value of the long looked forward to,

Long hoped for calm, the autumnal serenity

And the wisdom of age? Had they deceived us

Or deceived themselves, the quiet-voiced elders,

Bequeathing us merely a receipt for deceit?

The serenity only a deliberate hebetude,

The wisdom only the knowledge of dead secrets

Useless in the darkness into which they peered

Or from which they turned their eyes. There is, it seems to us,

At best, only a limited value

In the knowledge derived from experience.

The knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsifies,

For the pattern is new in every moment

And every moment is a new and shocking

Valuation of all we have been. We are only undeceived

Of that which, deceiving, could no longer harm.

In the middle, not only in the middle of the way

But all the way, in a dark wood, in a bramble,

On the edge of a grimpen, where is no secure foothold,

And menaced by monsters, fancy lights,

Risking enchantment. Do not let me hear

Of the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly,

Their fear of fear and frenzy, their fear of possession,

Of belonging to another, or to others, or to God.

The only wisdom we can hope to acquire

Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.

    The houses are all gone under the sea.

    The dancers are all gone under the hill.

III

O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark,

The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant,

The captains, merchant bankers, eminent men of letters,

The generous patrons of art, the statesmen and the rulers,

Distinguished civil servants, chairmen of many committees,

Industrial lords and petty contractors, all go into the dark,

And dark the Sun and Moon, and the Almanach de Gotha

And the Stock Exchange Gazette, the Directory of Directors,

And cold the sense and lost the motive of action.

And we all go with them, into the silent funeral,

Nobody's funeral, for there is no one to bury.

I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you

Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre,

The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed

With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness on darkness,

And we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panorama

And the bold imposing facade are all being rolled away—

Or as, when an underground train, in the tube, stops too long between stations

And the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence

And you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepen

Leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about;

Or when, under ether, the mind is conscious but conscious of nothing—

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope

For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,

For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith

But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.

Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:

So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.

The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,

The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy

Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony

Of death and birth.

                                    You say I am repeating

Something I have said before. I shall say it again.

Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there,

To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,

    You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.

In order to arrive at what you do not know

    You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.

In order to possess what you do not possess

    You must go by the way of dispossession.

In order to arrive at what you are not

    You must go through the way in which you are not.

And what you do not know is the only thing you know

And what you own is what you do not own

And where you are is where you are not.

IV

The wounded surgeon plies the steel

That questions the distempered part;

Beneath the bleeding hands we feel

The sharp compassion of the healer's art

Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.

    Our only health is the disease

If we obey the dying nurse

Whose constant care is not to please

But to remind of our, and Adam's curse,

And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.

    The whole earth is our hospital

Endowed by the ruined millionaire,

Wherein, if we do well, we shall

Die of the absolute paternal care

That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere.

    The chill ascends from feet to knees,

The fever sings in mental wires.

If to be warmed, then I must freeze

And quake in frigid purgatorial fires

Of which the flame is roses, and the smoke is briars.

    The dripping blood our only drink,

The bloody flesh our only food:

In spite of which we like to think

That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood—

Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.

V

So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years—

Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres

Trying to use words, and every attempt

Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure

Because one has only learnt to get the better of words

For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which

One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture

Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate

With shabby equipment always deteriorating

In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,

Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer

By strength and submission, has already been discovered

Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope

To emulate—but there is no competition—

There is only the fight to recover what has been lost

And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions

That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.

For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

    Home is where one starts from. As we grow older

The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated

Of dead and living. Not the intense moment

Isolated, with no before and after,

But a lifetime burning in every moment

And not the lifetime of one man only

But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.

There is a time for the evening under starlight,

A time for the evening under lamplight

(The evening with the photograph album).

Love is most nearly itself

When here and now cease to matter.

Old men ought to be explorers

Here or there does not matter

We must be still and still moving

Into another intensity

For a further union, a deeper communion

Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,

The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters

Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.

THE DRY SALVAGES

(The Dry Salvages—presumably les trois sauvages—is a small

group of rocks, with a beacon, off the N.E. coast of Cape Ann,

Massachusetts. Salvages is pronounced to rhyme with assuages.

Groaner: a whistling buoy.)

I

I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river

Is a strong brown god—sullen, untamed and intractable,

Patient to some degree, at first recognised as a frontier;

Useful, untrustworthy, as a conveyor of commerce;

Then only a problem confronting the builder of bridges.

The problem once solved, the brown god is almost forgotten

By the dwellers in cities—ever, however, implacable.

Keeping his seasons and rages, destroyer, reminder

Of what men choose to forget. Unhonoured, unpropitiated

By worshippers of the machine, but waiting, watching and waiting.

His rhythm was present in the nursery bedroom,

In the rank ailanthus of the April dooryard,

In the smell of grapes on the autumn table,

And the evening circle in the winter gaslight.

    The river is within us, the sea is all about us;

The sea is the land's edge also, the granite

Into which it reaches, the beaches where it tosses

Its hints of earlier and other creation:

The starfish, the horseshoe crab, the whale's backbone;

The pools where it offers to our curiosity

The more delicate algae and the sea anemone.

It tosses up our losses, the torn seine,

The shattered lobsterpot, the broken oar

And the gear of foreign dead men. The sea has many voices,

Many gods and many voices.

                                              The salt is on the briar rose,

The fog is in the fir trees.

                                        The sea howl

And the sea yelp, are different voices

Often together heard: the whine in the rigging,

The menace and caress of wave that breaks on water,

The distant rote in the granite teeth,

And the wailing warning from the approaching headland

Are all sea voices, and the heaving groaner

Rounded homewards, and the seagull:

And under the oppression of the silent fog

The tolling bell

Measures time not our time, rung by the unhurried

Ground swell, a time

Older than the time of chronometers, older

Than time counted by anxious worried women

Lying awake, calculating the future,

Trying to unweave, unwind, unravel

And piece together the past and the future,

Between midnight and dawn, when the past is all deception,

The future futureless, before the morning watch

When time stops and time is never ending;

And the ground swell, that is and was from the beginning,

Clangs

The bell.

II

Where is there an end of it, the soundless wailing,

The silent withering of autumn flowers

Dropping their petals and remaining motionless;

Where is there and end to the drifting wreckage,

The prayer of the bone on the beach, the unprayable

Prayer at the calamitous annunciation?

    There is no end, but addition: the trailing

Consequence of further days and hours,

While emotion takes to itself the emotionless

Years of living among the breakage

Of what was believed in as the most reliable—

And therefore the fittest for renunciation.

    There is the final addition, the failing

Pride or resentment at failing powers,

The unattached devotion which might pass for devotionless,

In a drifting boat with a slow leakage,

The silent listening to the undeniable

Clamour of the bell of the last annunciation.

    Where is the end of them, the fishermen sailing

Into the wind's tail, where the fog cowers?

We cannot think of a time that is oceanless

Or of an ocean not littered with wastage

Or of a future that is not liable

Like the past, to have no destination.

    We have to think of them as forever bailing,

Setting and hauling, while the North East lowers

Over shallow banks unchanging and erosionless

Or drawing their money, drying sails at dockage;

Not as making a trip that will be unpayable

For a haul that will not bear examination.

    There is no end of it, the voiceless wailing,

No end to the withering of withered flowers,

To the movement of pain that is painless and motionless,

To the drift of the sea and the drifting wreckage,

The bone's prayer to Death its God. Only the hardly, barely prayable

Prayer of the one Annunciation.

    It seems, as one becomes older,

That the past has another pattern, and ceases to be a mere sequence—

Or even development: the latter a partial fallacy

Encouraged by superficial notions of evolution,

Which becomes, in the popular mind, a means of disowning the past.

The moments of happiness—not the sense of well-being,

Fruition, fulfilment, security or affection,

Or even a very good dinner, but the sudden illumination—

We had the experience but missed the meaning,

And approach to the meaning restores the experience

In a different form, beyond any meaning

We can assign to happiness. I have said before

That the past experience revived in the meaning

Is not the experience of one life only

But of many generations—not forgetting

Something that is probably quite ineffable:

The backward look behind the assurance

Of recorded history, the backward half-look

Over the shoulder, towards the primitive terror.

Now, we come to discover that the moments of agony

(Whether, or not, due to misunderstanding,

Having hoped for the wrong things or dreaded the wrong things,

Is not in question) are likewise permanent

With such permanence as time has. We appreciate this better

In the agony of others, nearly experienced,

Involving ourselves, than in our own.

For our own past is covered by the currents of action,

But the torment of others remains an experience

Unqualified, unworn by subsequent attrition.

People change, and smile: but the agony abides.

Time the destroyer is time the preserver,

Like the river with its cargo of dead negroes, cows and chicken coops,

The bitter apple, and the bite in the apple.

And the ragged rock in the restless waters,

Waves wash over it, fogs conceal it;

On a halcyon day it is merely a monument,

In navigable weather it is always a seamark

To lay a course by: but in the sombre season

Or the sudden fury, is what it always was.

III

I sometimes wonder if that is what Krishna meant—

Among other things—or one way of putting the same thing:

That the future is a faded song, a Royal Rose or a lavender spray

Of wistful regret for those who are not yet here to regret,

Pressed between yellow leaves of a book that has never been opened.

And the way up is the way down, the way forward is the way back.

You cannot face it steadily, but this thing is sure,

That time is no healer: the patient is no longer here.

When the train starts, and the passengers are settled

To fruit, periodicals and business letters

(And those who saw them off have left the platform)

Their faces relax from grief into relief,

To the sleepy rhythm of a hundred hours.

Fare forward, travellers! not escaping from the past

Into different lives, or into any future;

You are not the same people who left that station

Or who will arrive at any terminus,

While the narrowing rails slide together behind you;

And on the deck of the drumming liner

Watching the furrow that widens behind you,

You shall not think 'the past is finished'

Or 'the future is before us'.

At nightfall, in the rigging and the aerial,

Is a voice descanting (though not to the ear,

The murmuring shell of time, and not in any language)

'Fare forward, you who think that you are voyaging;

You are not those who saw the harbour

Receding, or those who will disembark.

Here between the hither and the farther shore

While time is withdrawn, consider the future

And the past with an equal mind.

At the moment which is not of action or inaction

You can receive this: "on whatever sphere of being

The mind of a man may be intent

At the time of death"—that is the one action

(And the time of death is every moment)

Which shall fructify in the lives of others:

And do not think of the fruit of action.

Fare forward.

                      O voyagers, O seamen,

You who came to port, and you whose bodies

Will suffer the trial and judgement of the sea,

Or whatever event, this is your real destination.'

So Krishna, as when he admonished Arjuna

On the field of battle.

                                  Not fare well,

But fare forward, voyagers.

IV

Lady, whose shrine stands on the promontory,

Pray for all those who are in ships, those

Whose business has to do with fish, and

Those concerned with every lawful traffic

And those who conduct them.

    Repeat a prayer also on behalf of

Women who have seen their sons or husbands

Setting forth, and not returning:

Figlia del tuo figlio,

Queen of Heaven.

    Also pray for those who were in ships, and

Ended their voyage on the sand, in the sea's lips

Or in the dark throat which will not reject them

Or wherever cannot reach them the sound of the sea bell's

Perpetual angelus.

V

To communicate with Mars, converse with spirits,

To report the behaviour of the sea monster,

Describe the horoscope, haruspicate or scry,

Observe disease in signatures, evoke

Biography from the wrinkles of the palm

And tragedy from fingers; release omens

By sortilege, or tea leaves, riddle the inevitable

With playing cards, fiddle with pentagrams

Or barbituric acids, or dissect

The recurrent image into pre-conscious terrors—

To explore the womb, or tomb, or dreams; all these are usual

Pastimes and drugs, and features of the press:

And always will be, some of them especially

When there is distress of nations and perplexity

Whether on the shores of Asia, or in the Edgware Road.

Men's curiosity searches past and future

And clings to that dimension. But to apprehend

The point of intersection of the timeless

With time, is an occupation for the saint—

No occupation either, but something given

And taken, in a lifetime's death in love,

Ardour and selflessness and self-surrender.

For most of us, there is only the unattended

Moment, the moment in and out of time,

The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,

The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning

Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply

That it is not heard at all, but you are the music

While the music lasts. These are only hints and guesses,

Hints followed by guesses; and the rest

Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action.

The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation.

Here the impossible union

Of spheres of existence is actual,

Here the past and future

Are conquered, and reconciled,

Where action were otherwise movement

Of that which is only moved

And has in it no source of movement—

Driven by daemonic, chthonic

Powers. And right action is freedom

From past and future also.

For most of us, this is the aim

Never here to be realised;

Who are only undefeated

Because we have gone on trying;

We, content at the last

If our temporal reversion nourish

(Not too far from the yew-tree)

The life of significant soil.

LITTLE GIDDING

I

Midwinter spring is its own season

Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown,

Suspended in time, between pole and tropic.

When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire,

The brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditches,

In windless cold that is the heart's heat,

Reflecting in a watery mirror

A glare that is blindness in the early afternoon.

And glow more intense than blaze of branch, or brazier,

Stirs the dumb spirit: no wind, but pentecostal fire

In the dark time of the year. Between melting and freezing

The soul's sap quivers. There is no earth smell

Or smell of living thing. This is the spring time

But not in time's covenant. Now the hedgerow

Is blanched for an hour with transitory blossom

Of snow, a bloom more sudden

Than that of summer, neither budding nor fading,

Not in the scheme of generation.

Where is the summer, the unimaginable

Zero summer?

              If you came this way,

Taking the route you would be likely to take

From the place you would be likely to come from,

If you came this way in may time, you would find the hedges

White again, in May, with voluptuary sweetness.

It would be the same at the end of the journey,

If you came at night like a broken king,

If you came by day not knowing what you came for,

It would be the same, when you leave the rough road

And turn behind the pig-sty to the dull facade

And the tombstone. And what you thought you came for

Is only a shell, a husk of meaning

From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled

If at all. Either you had no purpose

Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured

And is altered in fulfilment. There are other places

Which also are the world's end, some at the sea jaws,

Or over a dark lake, in a desert or a city—

But this is the nearest, in place and time,

Now and in England.

              If you came this way,

Taking any route, starting from anywhere,

At any time or at any season,

It would always be the same: you would have to put off

Sense and notion. You are not here to verify,

Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity

Or carry report. You are here to kneel

Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more

Than an order of words, the conscious occupation

Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.

And what the dead had no speech for, when living,

They can tell you, being dead: the communication

Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.

Here, the intersection of the timeless moment

Is England and nowhere. Never and always.

II

Ash on and old man's sleeve

Is all the ash the burnt roses leave.

Dust in the air suspended

Marks the place where a story ended.

Dust inbreathed was a house—

The walls, the wainscot and the mouse,

The death of hope and despair,

       This is the death of air.

There are flood and drouth

Over the eyes and in the mouth,

Dead water and dead sand

Contending for the upper hand.

The parched eviscerate soil

Gapes at the vanity of toil,

Laughs without mirth.

       This is the death of earth.

Water and fire succeed

The town, the pasture and the weed.

Water and fire deride

The sacrifice that we denied.

Water and fire shall rot

The marred foundations we forgot,

Of sanctuary and choir.

       This is the death of water and fire.

In the uncertain hour before the morning

     Near the ending of interminable night

     At the recurrent end of the unending

After the dark dove with the flickering tongue

     Had passed below the horizon of his homing

     While the dead leaves still rattled on like tin

Over the asphalt where no other sound was

     Between three districts whence the smoke arose

     I met one walking, loitering and hurried

As if blown towards me like the metal leaves

     Before the urban dawn wind unresisting.

     And as I fixed upon the down-turned face

That pointed scrutiny with which we challenge

     The first-met stranger in the waning dusk

     I caught the sudden look of some dead master

Whom I had known, forgotten, half recalled

     Both one and many; in the brown baked features

     The eyes of a familiar compound ghost

Both intimate and unidentifiable.

     So I assumed a double part, and cried

     And heard another's voice cry: 'What! are you here?'

Although we were not. I was still the same,

     Knowing myself yet being someone other—

     And he a face still forming; yet the words sufficed

To compel the recognition they preceded.

     And so, compliant to the common wind,

     Too strange to each other for misunderstanding,

In concord at this intersection time

     Of meeting nowhere, no before and after,

     We trod the pavement in a dead patrol.

I said: 'The wonder that I feel is easy,

     Yet ease is cause of wonder. Therefore speak:

     I may not comprehend, may not remember.'

And he: 'I am not eager to rehearse

     My thoughts and theory which you have forgotten.

     These things have served their purpose: let them be.

So with your own, and pray they be forgiven

     By others, as I pray you to forgive

     Both bad and good. Last season's fruit is eaten

And the fullfed beast shall kick the empty pail.

     For last year's words belong to last year's language

     And next year's words await another voice.

But, as the passage now presents no hindrance

     To the spirit unappeased and peregrine

     Between two worlds become much like each other,

So I find words I never thought to speak

     In streets I never thought I should revisit

     When I left my body on a distant shore.

Since our concern was speech, and speech impelled us

     To purify the dialect of the tribe

     And urge the mind to aftersight and foresight,

Let me disclose the gifts reserved for age

     To set a crown upon your lifetime's effort.

     First, the cold friction of expiring sense

Without enchantment, offering no promise

     But bitter tastelessness of shadow fruit

     As body and soul begin to fall asunder.

Second, the conscious impotence of rage

     At human folly, and the laceration

     Of laughter at what ceases to amuse.

And last, the rending pain of re-enactment

     Of all that you have done, and been; the shame

     Of motives late revealed, and the awareness

Of things ill done and done to others' harm

     Which once you took for exercise of virtue.

     Then fools' approval stings, and honour stains.

From wrong to wrong the exasperated spirit

     Proceeds, unless restored by that refining fire

     Where you must move in measure, like a dancer.'

The day was breaking. In the disfigured street

     He left me, with a kind of valediction,

     And faded on the blowing of the horn.

III

There are three conditions which often look alike

Yet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow:

Attachment to self and to things and to persons, detachment

From self and from things and from persons; and, growing between them, indifference

Which resembles the others as death resembles life,

Being between two lives—unflowering, between

The live and the dead nettle. This is the use of memory:

For liberation—not less of love but expanding

Of love beyond desire, and so liberation

From the future as well as the past. Thus, love of a country

Begins as attachment to our own field of action

And comes to find that action of little importance

Though never indifferent. History may be servitude,

History may be freedom. See, now they vanish,

The faces and places, with the self which, as it could, loved them,

To become renewed, transfigured, in another pattern.

Sin is Behovely, but

All shall be well, and

All manner of thing shall be well.

If I think, again, of this place,

And of people, not wholly commendable,

Of no immediate kin or kindness,

But of some peculiar genius,

All touched by a common genius,

United in the strife which divided them;

If I think of a king at nightfall,

Of three men, and more, on the scaffold

And a few who died forgotten

In other places, here and abroad,

And of one who died blind and quiet

Why should we celebrate

These dead men more than the dying?

It is not to ring the bell backward

Nor is it an incantation

To summon the spectre of a Rose.

We cannot revive old factions

We cannot restore old policies

Or follow an antique drum.

These men, and those who opposed them

And those whom they opposed

Accept the constitution of silence

And are folded in a single party.

Whatever we inherit from the fortunate

We have taken from the defeated

What they had to leave us—a symbol:

A symbol perfected in death.

And all shall be well and

All manner of thing shall be well

By the purification of the motive

In the ground of our beseeching.

IV

The dove descending breaks the air

With flame of incandescent terror

Of which the tongues declare

The one discharge from sin and error.

The only hope, or else despair

     Lies in the choice of pyre of pyre—

     To be redeemed from fire by fire.

Who then devised the torment? Love.

Love is the unfamiliar Name

Behind the hands that wove

The intolerable shirt of flame

Which human power cannot remove.

     We only live, only suspire

     Consumed by either fire or fire.

V

What we call the beginning is often the end

And to make and end is to make a beginning.

The end is where we start from. And every phrase

And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,

Taking its place to support the others,

The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,

An easy commerce of the old and the new,

The common word exact without vulgarity,

The formal word precise but not pedantic,

The complete consort dancing together)

Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,

Every poem an epitaph. And any action

Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat

Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.

We die with the dying:

See, they depart, and we go with them.

We are born with the dead:

See, they return, and bring us with them.

The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree

Are of equal duration. A people without history

Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern

Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails

On a winter's afternoon, in a secluded chapel

History is now and England.

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this

     Calling

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

Through the unknown, unremembered gate

When the last of earth left to discover

Is that which was the beginning;

At the source of the longest river

The voice of the hidden waterfall

And the children in the apple-tree

Not known, because not looked for

But heard, half-heard, in the stillness

Between two waves of the sea.

Quick now, here, now, always—

A condition of complete simplicity

(Costing not less than everything)

And all shall be well and

All manner of thing shall be well

When the tongues of flame are in-folded

Into the crowned knot of fire

And the fire and the rose are one.

Cuatro cuartetos

T.S. Eliot

Traducción de JOSÉ EMILIO PACHECO

Nacido el 30 de junio de 1939, en Ciudad México es un distinguido poeta, ensayista, novelista y cuentista. Se le considera uno de los grandes poetas mexicanos de la segunda mitad del Siglo XX. Ha enseñado literatura en la UNAM, así como en la Universidad de Maryland, recinto de College Park, y la Universidad de Essex, así como en otras instituciuones universitarias de Estados Unidos, Canadá y el Reino Unido. Es autor de números libros de poesía,entre ellos Los elementos de la noche, el resposo del fuego, la arena errante, Siglo pasado, El silencio de la luna y  Tarde o temprano (Colección de trabajos). Entre sus novelas se encuentran: Tiempo distante y otros relatos, Morirás lejos, El principio del placer, La sangre de Medusa y El Emperador de los Asirios.

        José Emilio Pacheco preparó esta traducción para una edición especial del Fondo de Cultura Económica, de México. La primera edición se publicó en 1989.  

DIELS: Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (Herakleitos)

A pesar de que la razón es lo común, los más viven como si fueran poseedores de sabiduría propia.

El camino hacia lo alto y el camino hacia lo bajo es uno y el mismo.

Luis FAKRÉ: Heráclito (exposición y fragmentos)

Burnt Norton

I

El tiempo presente y el tiempo pasado

Acaso estén presentes en el tiempo futuro

Y tal vez al futuro lo contenga el pasado.

Si todo tiempo es un presente eterno

Todo tiempo es irredimible.

Lo que pudo haber sido es una abstracción

Que sigue siendo perpetua posibilidad

Sólo en un mundo de especulaciones.

Lo que pudo haber sido y lo que ha sido

Tienden a un solo fin, presente siempre.

Eco de pisadas en la memoria,

Van por el corredor que no seguimos

Hacia la puerta que no llegamos nunca a abrir

Y da al jardín de rosas. Así en tu mente

Resuenan mis palabras.

Pero no sé

Con cuál objeto perturbamos el polvo

Que vela el cuenco en donde están los pétalos

De rosa.

Y otros ecos

Habitan el jardín. ¿Vamos tras ellos?

De prisa, dijo el pájaro: encuéntralos, encuéntralos,

Al dar vuelta a la esquina, tras la primera puerta,

En nuestro primer mundo. ¿Vamos en pos

Del engaño del tordo? En nuestro primer mundo.

Allí estaban, solemnes, invisibles;

Se movían sin premura sobre las hojas muertas,

Bajo el calor de otoño, en el aire vibrante.

Y el pájaro silbó en contestación

A la inaudible música oculta entre las plantas

Y el destello de una mirada no vista cruzó el espacio.

Porque las rosas tenían aspecto de flores contempladas.

Eran como nuestros huéspedes, aceptados y aceptantes.

Así pues, avanzamos, y ellos, en procesión formal,

Caminaron también por el desierto sendero

Hasta llegar a la rotonda con el seto de arbustos.

Y miraron entonces el estanque drenado.

Seco el estanque, seco el concreto, pardos los bordes.

Y se llenó el estanque de agua solar,

En silencio, en silencio se alzaron lotos,

La superficie brilló desde el corazón de la luz

Y ellos quedaron tras nosotros reflejándose en el

estanque.

Luego pasó una nube y se vació el estanque. Váyanse, dijo el pájaro, porque las frondas estaban

llenas de niños

Que alegremente se ocultaban y contenían la risa. Váyanse, váyanse, dijo el pájaro: el género humano No puede soportar tanta realidad.

El tiempo pasado y el tiempo futuro,

Lo que pudo haber sido y lo que ha sido

Tienden a un solo fin, presente siempre.

II

Ajo y zafiros en la greda

Traban el eje de la rueda.

Canta la sangre en su alambrada

Bajo la cicatrices inveteradas,

Calmando la guerras hace tiempo olvidadas.

Así la danza de la arteria

Y la circulación de la materia

Vagan en la deriva de las estrellas.

Sube el verano hasta dejar su huella

En ese árbol que la luz aloja

En la móvil silueta de la hoja.

Y se escucha en la tierra humedecida

Al jabalí y al perro, proseguida

También su eterna lucha; mas sus rastros

Se concilian arriba entre los astros.

En el punto inmóvil del mundo que gira.

Ni carne ni ausencia de carne; ni desde ni hacia;

En el punto inmóvil: allí está la danza,

Y no la detención ni el movimiento.

Y no llamen fijeza

Al sitio donde se unen pasado y futuro.

Ni ida ni vuelta, ni ascenso ni descenso.

De no ser por el punto, el punto inmóvil,

No habría danza, y sólo existe danza.

Sólo puedo decir: allí estuvimos,

No puedo decir dónde; tampoco cuánto tiempo,

Porque sería situarlo en el tiempo.

Librarse interiormente del deseo material,

Descargarse de la acción y el sufrimiento,

De la compulsión externa e interna, rodeada sin embargo

Por una gracia de sentido,

Una luz blanca inmóvil que se mueve,

Erhebung* sin movimiento, concentración sin

eliminación,

Un nuevo mundo y el viejo que se hacen explícitos, se

aclaran

En la consumación de su éxtasis parcial,

La resolución de su parcial horror.

Pero el encadenamiento de pasado y futuro,

Tejidos en la debilidad del cuerpo cambiante,

Ampara al género humano del cielo y la condenación

Que la carne no puede soportar.

El tiempo pasado y el tiempo futuro

Sólo permiten mínima conciencia.

Ser consciente significa no estar en el tiempo,

Pero sólo en el tiempo puede el momento en el jardín

de rosas,

El momento en la pérgola bajo el azote de la lluvia,

El momento en que desciende el humo sobre la iglesia

atravesada por corrientes de aire,

Ser recordados, envueltos en el pasado y el futuro.

Sólo con tiempo se conquista el tiempo.

*Erhtbung: elevación, éxtasis.

III

Este es el sitio de los desafectos.

Tiempo antes y tiempo después

Bajo una luz dudosa: ni luz de día

Que inviste las formas con lúcida quietud

Y convierte la sombra en belleza fugaz

Con lenta rotación que sugiere permanencia,

Ni tinieblas para purificar el alma,

Tinieblas que vacían lo sensual mediante la privación

Y limpian del afecto por cosas temporales.

Ni plenitud ni vacío. Sólo un destello

Sobre las tensas caras hendidas por el tiempo, Perturbadas en su perturbación por la perturbación, Llenas de caprichos y vacías de sentido.

Tumefacta apatía sin concentración.

Hombres y trozos de papel giran llevados

por el viento frío

Que sopla antes y después del tiempo.

Viento que entra y sale de pulmones enfermos,

Tiempo antes y tiempo después.

Eructo de almas insalubres

En el aire marchito, aletargadas

Por el viento que azota las lúgubres colinas

londinenses:

Hampstead y Clerkenwell, Campden y Putney,

Highgate, Primrose y Ludgate. No aquí,

No aquí en tinieblas, en este mundo de vana

agitación.

Descenso más abajo, descenso únicamente

Al mundo de perpetua soledad,

Mundo sin mundo que no es mundo,

Tinieblas interiores, privación

Y despojo de toda propiedad.

Desecación del mundo del sentido,

Evacuación del mundo del capricho,

Incompetencia del mundo del espíritu:

Este es el único camino, y el otro

Es el mismo, no en movimiento

Sino en abstención del movimiento;

Mientras el mundo se mueve,

En apetencia, por los metálicos caminos

Del tiempo pasado y el tiempo futuro.

IV

Han sepultado al día el tiempo y la campana.

Oscura, ahuyenta el sol una nube lejana.

¿Se volverá hacia nosotros

El girasol? Errante

¿Se doblará la clemátide?

¿Se aferrarán el ramo y el zarcillo colgante?

Y del ciprés los dedos enroscados

¿Acaso de nosotros han de pender helados?

Después que el ala

Del martín pescador ha respondido

Con la luz a la luz y el silencio ha venido

La luz no se estremece ni respira

En el inmóvil punto de este mundo que gira.

V

Las palabras se mueven, la música se mueve

Nada más en el tiempo; pero lo que sólo está vivo Sólo puede morir. Termina el habla

Y vuelven al silencio las palabras.

Sólo mediante forma y estructura

Pueden llegar a la quietud la música o las palabras

Como un inmóvil jarrón chino

Se mueve perpetuamente en su quietud.

No la inmovilidad del violín mientras la nota dura,

No sólo eso sino la coexistencia,

0 digamos que el fin precede al comienzo

Y que el fin y el comienzo estuvieron presentes Antes del comienzo y después del fin.

Y todo es siempre ahora. Las palabras se esfuerzan,

Se resquebrajan, a veces se rompen bajo la carga

y la tensión,

Resbalan, se deslizan, perecen,

La imprecisión las deteriora, pierden su sitio, pierden su fijeza. Voces agudas

Que regañan, se burlan o sólo parlotean

Las asaltan continuamente. La Palabra en el desierto Es atacada sobre todo por voces de tentación,

La sombra que solloza en la danza fúnebre,

El sonoro lamento de la quimera desolada.

El detalle del diseño es movimiento,

Como en la imagen de los diez peldaños.

El deseo también es movimiento,

En sí mismo indeseable;

El amor es inconmovible,

Sólo es causa y es fin del movimiento,

Sin tiempo y sin deseo,

Excepto bajo el aspecto del tiempo,

Captado en forma de limitación

Entre no ser y ser.

De pronto en un rayo de luz solar,

Exactamente mientras el polvo se mueve,

Se levanta la risa oculta

De los niños entre el follaje.

De prisa, aquí, ahora, siempre—

Ridículo el estéril tiempo triste

Que se extiende antes y después.

East Coker

I

En mi principio está mi fin. Una tras otra

Las casas se levantan y se derrumban, se

desmoronan, se extienden,

Son arrancadas, destruidas, restauradas,

o en su lugar

Queda un baldío, una fábrica o un paso a desnivel. Viejas piedras para nuevos edificios,

Vieja leña para nuevas hogueras,

Viejas hogueras para las cenizas y cenizas

para la tierra

Que ya es carne, pieles y heces,

Huesos humanos y animales, tallos y hojas de cereal. Las casas viven y mueren.

Hay un tiempo para la construcción,

Un tiempo para habitar y engendrar

Y un tiempo para que el viento rompa el cristal

desprendido

Sacuda las maderas en que trota el ratón del campo

Y el tapiz en jirones donde se halla bordado

Un lema silencioso.

En mi principio está mi fin. Ahora cae la luz

A lo largo del campo abierto

Y oculta con sus ramas la honda vereda,

Vereda oscura en el anochecer

Donde uno se protege contra el talud cuando pasa un vehículo,

Y la honda vereda insiste en continuar

Hasta la aldea hipnotizada en el calor eléctrico.

En la neblina cálida la luz sofocante

Es absorbida, no refractada, por la piedra gris. Duermen las dalias en el silencio vacío.

Esperan al búho que llega temprano.

En ese campo abierto,

Si uno no se acerca demasiado, si uno no se acerca

demasiado,

En una medianoche de verano se puede oír

La música de la débil gaita y el tamboril

Y ver la danza en torno de la hoguera

La unión del hombre y la mujer

En bailes que significan matrimonio—

Un sacramento noble y útil.

De dos en dos, en conjunción necesaria,

Tomados de la mano o de los brazos

Como símbolo de concordia.

Dan vueltas a la hoguera

Saltan sobre las llamas o se unen en corros,

Rústicamente solemnes o en rústica risa

Levantan sus pesados pies en toscos zapatos,

Pies de tierra y arcilla que se alzan en el júbilo

del campo

El júbilo de aquellos que están bajo la tierra

Desde hace mucho y nutren los cereales.

Llevan el tiempo, marcan el ritmo de su danza, Como viven al ritmo de las vivientes estaciones,

El tiempo de las estaciones y las constelaciones,

El tiempo de la ordeña y el tiempo de la cosecha,

El tiempo de ayuntarse hombre y mujer

Y el de los animales. Pies que suben y bajan,

Comida y bebida, estiércol y muerte.

El alba ya despunta y otro día

Se dispone al silencio y al calor.

El viento de la aurora mar adentro

Ondula y se desliza. Estoy aquí

0 allá o en otra parte. En mi principio.

II

¿Qué hacen noviembre y su final entorno

Con primavera y su feliz trastorno

Y las criaturas del calor de estío,

Las flores que destruye el paso impío

Malvarrosa que apunta a lo excesivo,

(Su color rojo muere en gris cautivo)

Rosas tardías con temprana nieve?

Entre los astros a rodar se atreve

El trueno que simula un carro armado

En la guerra de estrellas constelado

Al sol combate sin piedad Escorpión

Sol y luna se van. Por esta acción

Lloran cometas y el meteoro vuela

En fuego acabará este mundo en vela

Cazan los cielos, cazan las llanuras

Forman un remolino en las alturas

Guerra perpetua que arderá en el cielo Hasta que cubra a este planeta el hielo.

Esto fue una manera de decirlo, no muy satisfactoria.

Un ejercicio perifrástico en un estilo poético raído Que lo deja a uno ante la intolerable lucha

Con las palabras y los significados.

La poesía no importa.

No era (para recomenzar) lo que uno se había imaginado.

¿Cuál iba a ser el valor de lo que durante tanto

tiempo anhelamos,

La calma tan esperada, la serenidad otoñal

Y la sabiduría de la vejez? ¿Nos habían engañado

0 se engañaron a sí mismos los ancestros de voces tranquilas

Y simplemente nos legaron una receta

para el engaño?

La serenidad sólo una deliberada torpeza,

La sabiduría sólo el conocimiento de secretos

muertos

Inútiles en las tinieblas que ellos escudriñaron

0 de las que apartaron los ojos. Hay, nos parece, Cuando mucho un valor limitado

En el conocimiento que deriva de la experiencia.

El conocimiento impone una estructura

y falsifica,

Porque la estructura es nueva a cada instante

Y cada instante una nueva y estremecedora

Valoración de cuánto hemos sido.

Sólo nos desengañamos

De lo que engañándonos ya no puede hacer daño.

En medio, no sólo en medio del camino, en

todo el camino,

La selva oscura, la zarza, al borde de una ciénaga en

donde todo paso es inseguro

Y amenazados por monstruos, luces delirantes

Bajo riesgo de encantamiento. No me hablen

De la sabiduría de los ancianos sino más bien

de su locura,

Su miedo al miedo y al frenesí, su miedo

a la posesión,

A pertenecer a otro, a otros o a Dios.

La única sabiduría que podemos esperar adquirir

Es la sabiduría de la humildad:

La humildad es infinita.

Las casas yacen bajo el mar.

Los danzantes yacen bajo el montículo

III

0h tinieblas, tinieblas; tinieblas. Todos caen

en tinieblas,

Los vacantes espacios entre los astros, lo vacío

en el vacío, i

Militares, banqueros, mercaderes, eminentes .

hombres de letras,

Mecenas generosos de las artes, estadistas y

gobernantes,

Notables funcionarios, presidentes de muchos

comités,

Señores de la industria y pequeños contratistas,

Todos caen en tinieblas,

Y tinieblas el sol, la luna y el Almanaque de Gotha

Y la Gaceta de la Bolsa y el Directorio de Directores

Y se enfría el sentido y se pierde el motivo

de la acción

Y todos vamos con ellos en el funeral silencioso,

El funeral de nadie pues no hay nadie

a quién enterrar.

Quédate inmóvil, dije a mi alma, y deja que caigan

sobre ti las tinieblas

Que serán las tinieblas de Dios. Como en un teatro

Se apagan las luces para cambiar el decorado

Con un hueco rumor de bastidores, un movimiento de

tinieblas sobre tinieblas,

Y sabemos que enrollan y quitan de su lugar

las colinas y los árboles, el panorama distante

Y la fachada altiva e imponente.

O como cuando el vagón del metro se detiene en el

túnel entre dos estaciones

Y la conversación se eleva y luego poco a poco

se desvanece en silencio

Y uno ve ahondarse el vacío mental detrás de cada rostro

Y queda sólo el terror creciente de no tener ya nada en qué pensar.

O como cuando bajo anestesia la mente tiene

conciencia pero conciencia de nada

Dije a mi alma: Quédate inmóvil y espera

sin esperanza

Porque la esperanza sería esperanza en lo que no

debe esperarse;

Aguarda sin amor

Porque el amor sería amor de lo que no se debe amar.

Sin embargo queda la fe;

Pero la fe, el amor y la esperanza se encuentran

en la espera.

Espera sin el pensamiento ya que no estás preparada

para él.

Así las tinieblas serán la luz y la inmovilidad será

la danza.

Susurro de corrientes y relámpagos invernales.

El invisible tomillo silvestre y la fresa silvestre,

La risa en el jardín, eco del éxtasis

No pedido sino exigente que marca la agonía

De muerte y nacimiento.

Dices que repito

Algo que he dicho. Lo diré nuevamente.

¿Lo diré nuevamente? Para llegar ahí,

Para llegar adonde estás,

Para salir desde donde no estás,

Debes ir por un camino en donde no hay éxtasis, Para llegar a lo que no sabes

Debes ir por un camino que es el de la ignorancia.

Para poseer lo que no posees

Debes ir por el camino de la desposesión.

Para llegar a lo que no eres

Debes ir por el camino en que no eres.

Y lo único que sabes es lo que no sabes .....

Y lo único que posees es lo que no posees

Y en donde estás es en donde no estás.

IV

El cirujano herido hunde el acero

E interroga la parte destemplada.

Late bajo su mano ensangrentada

La aguda compasión del curandero

Que interroga la fiebre en su tablero.

Nuestra única salud es la enfermedad,

Si acato a la enfermera agonizante

Que no intenta agradar: es su constante

Afán el recordar: la humanidad

Empeora y desde allí sigue adelante.

Nuestro hospital está en la tierra entera.

Lo legó el arruinado millonario.

En él, si bien nos va, tan sólo espera

La muerte, ese cuidado extraordinario

Que protege y estorba dondequiera.

Sube el frío del pie hasta la rodilla.

Canta la fiebre en su mental alambre.

Para tener calor me enfrío a la orilla

Del purgatorio. El fuego es hielo y hambre;

rosas la llama; el humo, zarza, astilla.

Sólo bebemos sangre, y mientras tanto

Carne sangrienta es la única comida.

A pesar de ello hacemos nuestra vida

De suponernos carne sin espanto

Y a este viernes llamamos Viernes Santo.

V

Y bien, estoy aquí, en medio del camino

Y he pasado veinte años —veinte años en gran parte perdidos,

Los años de entreguerra*—

Tratando de aprender a usar las palabras

y cada intento es un comienzo enteramente nuevo

Y es un tipo distinto de fracaso.

Porque uno sólo ha aprendido a dominar

las palabras

para decir lo que ya no tiene que decir

O de ese modo en que no está dispuesto ya a

decirlo.

Por eso cada intento

Es un nuevo comienzo, una incursión en lo

inarticulado

Con un mísero equipo cada vez más roído

En el desorden general de la inexactitud

del sentimiento,

Escuadras de la emoción sin disciplina.

Y lo que debe ser conquistado

Mediante fuerza y sumisión, ya ha sido descubierto Una, dos, varias veces por hombres que uno no tiene

esperanza de emular

—Pero no hay competencia:

Sólo existe la lucha por recobrar lo perdido

Y encontrado y perdido una vez y otra vez

*En el original: the years of l'entre deux guerres.

Y ahora en condiciones que parecen adversas.

Pero quizá no hay ganancia ni pérdida:

Para nosotros sólo existe el intento.

Lo demás no es asunto nuestro.

La casa es el lugar del que partimos.

A medida que envejecemos

El mundo se nos vuelve más extraño, más compleja

La ordenación de muertos y vivos.

No el intenso momento

Aislado sin antes ni después,

Sino la vida entera que arde a cada momento

Y no la vida entera de un solo hombre

Sino de viejas piedras indescifrables.

Hay un tiempo para el anochecer bajo la luz

de las estrellas,

Un tiempo para el anochecer a la luz de la lámpara (El anochecer con el álbum de fotos).

El amor se acerca más a sí mismo

Cuando dejan de importar el aquí y el ahora.

Los viejos deben ser exploradores

Aquí o allá, no importa dónde

Debemos estar inmóviles y sin embargo movernos

Hacia otra intensidad

En busca de una mayor unión, una comunión

más profunda

A través del frío oscuro y la vacía desolación,

El grito de la ola, el grito del viento, las grandes

aguas

Del petrel y de la marsopa.

En mi fin está mi principio.

The Dry Salvages

The Dry Salvages —acaso originalmente les trois

sauvages — es un pequeño conjunto de rocas en las

que se levanta un faro. Se encuentran en la costa

noreste de Cape Ann, Massachusetts. Salvages se

pronuncia de modo que rime con assuages.

Groaner es una boya silbante.)

I

No sé mucho de dioses, mas supongo que el río

Es un dios pardo y fuerte —hosco, indómito,

intratable,

Paciente hasta cierto punto, al principio reconocido

como frontera;

Útil, poco de fiar, como transportador del comercio, Luego sólo un problema para los constructores

de puentes.

Ya resuelto el problema queda casi olvidado el gran

dios pardo

Por quienes viven en ciudades—sin embargo,

es implacable siempre,

Fiel a sus estaciones y sus cóleras

Destructor que recuerda

Cuanto prefieren olvidar los humanos.

No es objeto de honras

Ni actos propiciatorios por parte de los veneradores

de las máquinas;

Está siempre esperando, acechando, esperando.

En la cuna del niño su ritmo estuvo presente,

En el frondoso ailanto del jardín en abril,