A line has been consistently popping into my head, “At the still point of the turning world.” I spent one semester reading T.S. Eliot, and I have since been haunted by his words, and honestly, I have contributed to this haunting as time and again I have gone back to read various sections of Ash Wednesday, or Four Quartets, because there is some kind of synchronicity between the rhythm and striving of his poetry and the rhythm and striving of my soul. Maybe this is projection on my part, but when I read Eliot’s poetry  I feel  a kind of wrestling to bring the chaos and pain of modern consciousness into alignment with liturgical rhythms, and thereby bring words and consciousness to the threshold of transformation.

But, that’s just me.

For now I would like to post a short section from the first part of Four Quartets titled, “Burnt Norton”, and I invite you to read it out loud.

*******

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.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 13th, 2011 at 5:07 pm and is filed under Literature. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.