20150924

Dignity

I went down where the vultures feed
I would've gone deeper, but there wasnt any need
Heard the tongues of angels and the tongues of men
It all sounded no different to me
Soul of a nation is under the knife
Death is standing in the doorway of life,
In the next room a man fighting with his wife
over Dignity.



East Coker


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 wholy 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.


T. S. Eliot Poems

The Four Quartets