Four Quartets

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 for 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 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 life and 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.
I order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is a way of ignorance
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of the dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through a 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.

T.S.Elliot

The Man Watching

I can tell by the way the trees beat ,after so many dull days, on my worried window panes,
that a storm is coming.
and I hear the far off fields say things
i can't bear without a friend,
i can't hear without a sister

what we choose to fight is so tiny
and what fights us is so great
if only we would allow ourselves to be dominated
as things do,by some immense storm,
we would become strong too and not need names.

When we win it is with small things
and the triumph itself makes us small
what is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us.

T.S. Elliot