Quatro Quartets

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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.

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.

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.
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 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.

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.
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.

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling

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.

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