Friday, January 12, 2007

Poetry

T.S.Eliot's Four Quartets is one of my favourite poems. Here's an extract:

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.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

You've made me ashamed and embarrassed now. I never read poetry, a failing for which I deserve a good slapping.

It wasn't really helped that as a child my mum kept castigating Dylan Thomas..

'He was an alcoholic..'. This may be true, but I suspect is about as relevant to his poetry as the fact of George Best's drinking is to his football skills.

I never liked to challenge her on this point lest I be thought to compromise on the fight against the 'demon drink.'

Philip Larkin did have an apposite observation on our parents, but maybe a little harsh for this transgression of my mother...

11:05 am  
Blogger Whispering Walls said...

Dylan Thomas is included in the new curriculum.

2:26 pm  

Post a Comment

<< Home