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4.3 AVERAGE
4.3 AVERAGE
A Poem Inspired by the 4 QTs.
The playful heaviness
Of an empty line.
The heavy playfulness
of abandoned time.
The hills of books,
In the corner nook,
Swept away, far away
in and out of mind
By the running voice and line
of T. S. Eliot's Rhymes.
What of the same?
The world still moves,
Does it not?
Does it not move the same?
Must we, shall we,
Acknowledge it aloud.
Have we not been made lame,
By the Addictions of the m(one),
Better known
as mobile phone.
Before Or After
There is no stillness,
Mocking away as we Will
Away, away time,
Killing time, making little of it.
Belittling it, on the last day of March.
The eyes are turning in the darkness,
the flames are flickering out
now,
Time's candle is near surely quenched.
The time to leave,
The time to go,
The time to kill,
When time is slow
down, down into the refracted sounds
Of Orpheus's cursed, but long silenced gates.
The Long Look
Forward Too,
Longing and moving forward to,
The abyss that awaits
Those counters of time,
Who, of a mind, forgot to live,
Within the essence of time,
That is to say:
The PRESENT.
A present made,
From the Atlassian
weight of waiting.
Deceived in the middle,
Squandered about,
On the edge of wisdom.
In the age of doubt,
We all go about in the dark.
Socrates's cave is still in Athens,
Though the poison has long dried.
We move in darkness
with nothing, nevermore,
to think about.
Are we still not ready?
The laughter, Ha Ha
has gone quiet.
...
How soon, will time
become, once again,
older than those counted on a watch,
Counted on the lines of a face,
felt in the weather,
Or heard above the soft,
distant, dying sounds of traffic.
Counted Time has an end.
You can count on that.
The withered screens,
Of broken or abandoned phones.
New technology but a patterned past,
The moonlit journey now gone in hast,
The covered pass of life's train,
Time: the darkened hole of a hollowed hill,
gone over or about, tis something still.
This thing is sure,
Eliot's noted it,
since 41.
A Year gone now,
Since the Suez Canal,
& though the ships came free,
so did the piled up debris
of our inhumanities.
It's been noticed.
The lowered tides of sand,
Whip about the outdated,
but once termed common man.
Though spun from many a' prophet-less land,
The thread of time is surely grasped
by the wayward, weird sisters.
For how long,
must we wander about online,
out of time,
Now each of us,
full voiced mimes
and entertainers.
The Fresh Prince fallen,
The King long dead.
In theory, thought and voice.
The words,
mere ghosts,
Transparent and fleeting,
Like Nijinsky's mind.
To end it here, perhaps,
Out of luck,
Out of talent or
Indifference.
Favourite lines from Eliot's poem:
The Long Look Forward To
Only Through Time Is time Conquered.
' There are three conditions which often look alike/
Yet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow:/
Attachment to self and to things and to persons, detachment/
From self and from things and from person, and, growing/
Between them, indifference.
The playful heaviness
Of an empty line.
The heavy playfulness
of abandoned time.
The hills of books,
In the corner nook,
Swept away, far away
in and out of mind
By the running voice and line
of T. S. Eliot's Rhymes.
What of the same?
The world still moves,
Does it not?
Does it not move the same?
Must we, shall we,
Acknowledge it aloud.
Have we not been made lame,
By the Addictions of the m(one),
Better known
as mobile phone.
Before Or After
There is no stillness,
Mocking away as we Will
Away, away time,
Killing time, making little of it.
Belittling it, on the last day of March.
The eyes are turning in the darkness,
the flames are flickering out
now,
Time's candle is near surely quenched.
The time to leave,
The time to go,
The time to kill,
When time is slow
down, down into the refracted sounds
Of Orpheus's cursed, but long silenced gates.
The Long Look
Forward Too,
Longing and moving forward to,
The abyss that awaits
Those counters of time,
Who, of a mind, forgot to live,
Within the essence of time,
That is to say:
The PRESENT.
A present made,
From the Atlassian
weight of waiting.
Deceived in the middle,
Squandered about,
On the edge of wisdom.
In the age of doubt,
We all go about in the dark.
Socrates's cave is still in Athens,
Though the poison has long dried.
We move in darkness
with nothing, nevermore,
to think about.
Are we still not ready?
The laughter, Ha Ha
has gone quiet.
...
How soon, will time
become, once again,
older than those counted on a watch,
Counted on the lines of a face,
felt in the weather,
Or heard above the soft,
distant, dying sounds of traffic.
Counted Time has an end.
You can count on that.
The withered screens,
Of broken or abandoned phones.
New technology but a patterned past,
The moonlit journey now gone in hast,
The covered pass of life's train,
Time: the darkened hole of a hollowed hill,
gone over or about, tis something still.
This thing is sure,
Eliot's noted it,
since 41.
A Year gone now,
Since the Suez Canal,
& though the ships came free,
so did the piled up debris
of our inhumanities.
It's been noticed.
The lowered tides of sand,
Whip about the outdated,
but once termed common man.
Though spun from many a' prophet-less land,
The thread of time is surely grasped
by the wayward, weird sisters.
For how long,
must we wander about online,
out of time,
Now each of us,
full voiced mimes
and entertainers.
The Fresh Prince fallen,
The King long dead.
In theory, thought and voice.
The words,
mere ghosts,
Transparent and fleeting,
Like Nijinsky's mind.
To end it here, perhaps,
Out of luck,
Out of talent or
Indifference.
Favourite lines from Eliot's poem:
The Long Look Forward To
Only Through Time Is time Conquered.
' There are three conditions which often look alike/
Yet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow:/
Attachment to self and to things and to persons, detachment/
From self and from things and from person, and, growing/
Between them, indifference.
dark
fast-paced
Not gonna lie, I'm very new to poetry, so reading this required a lot of sifting through SparkNotes, Wikipedia, and the random ideas of people on the internet to understand - but boy, it was worth it!
reflective
I liked the last three out of the four the best. The first one was very difficult to follow and I didn't like the imagery or wordings as much. I really enjoyed the rhythms and sounds in the different quartets and they were fun to read aloud.
I'm not saying anything that hasn't been said before when I say that TS Elliot was a genius, but damn. TS Elliot was a genius.
This is one of those books that begs to be revisited. The more often I go back, the more I get out of each poem, and although I definitely have my favorites (I've yet to really enjoy reading the last section), each poem always has something to offer. The book is a cynical meditation on time, writing, aging, and more.
I love it.
Some favorite quotes:
If all time is eternally present
All time is redeemable.
13
for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at.
14
human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
14
Only through time time is conquered.
16
Distracted from distraction by distraction
17
that which is only living
Can only die.
19
Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still.
19
Desire itself is movement,
Not in itself desirable
20
Out at sea the dawn wind
Wrinkles and slides. I am here
Or there, or elsewhere. In my beginning.
25
That was a way of putting it – not very satisfactory:
A perisphrastic study in a worn-out poetical fashion,
Leaving one still with the intolerable wrestle
With words and meanings
25
And the wisdom of age? Had they deceived us
Or deceived themselves, the quiet-voiced elders,
Bequeathing us merely a receipt for deceit?
The serenity only a deliberate hebetude,
The wisdom only the knowledge of dead secrets
Useless in the darkness into which they peered
Or from which they turned their eyes. There is, it seems to us,
At best, only a limited value
In the knowledge derived from experience.
26
every moment is a new and shocking
Valuation of all we have been
26
I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God.
27
And you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepen
Leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about;
28
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
31
We cannot think of a time that is oceanless
Or of an ocean not littered with wastage
Or of a future that is not liable
Like the past, to have no destination.
38
For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time,
The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning
Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts.
44
[We] are only undefeated
Because we have gone on trying.
45
This is one of those books that begs to be revisited. The more often I go back, the more I get out of each poem, and although I definitely have my favorites (I've yet to really enjoy reading the last section), each poem always has something to offer. The book is a cynical meditation on time, writing, aging, and more.
I love it.
Some favorite quotes:
If all time is eternally present
All time is redeemable.
13
for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at.
14
human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
14
Only through time time is conquered.
16
Distracted from distraction by distraction
17
that which is only living
Can only die.
19
Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still.
19
Desire itself is movement,
Not in itself desirable
20
Out at sea the dawn wind
Wrinkles and slides. I am here
Or there, or elsewhere. In my beginning.
25
That was a way of putting it – not very satisfactory:
A perisphrastic study in a worn-out poetical fashion,
Leaving one still with the intolerable wrestle
With words and meanings
25
And the wisdom of age? Had they deceived us
Or deceived themselves, the quiet-voiced elders,
Bequeathing us merely a receipt for deceit?
The serenity only a deliberate hebetude,
The wisdom only the knowledge of dead secrets
Useless in the darkness into which they peered
Or from which they turned their eyes. There is, it seems to us,
At best, only a limited value
In the knowledge derived from experience.
26
every moment is a new and shocking
Valuation of all we have been
26
I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God.
27
And you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepen
Leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about;
28
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
31
We cannot think of a time that is oceanless
Or of an ocean not littered with wastage
Or of a future that is not liable
Like the past, to have no destination.
38
For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time,
The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning
Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts.
44
[We] are only undefeated
Because we have gone on trying.
45
“(…) Para eso sirve la memoria:
no tanto para liberarse del amor como para ampliar
el amor más allá del deseo y librarse con ello
del futuro como del pasado”.
“A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well”.
no tanto para liberarse del amor como para ampliar
el amor más allá del deseo y librarse con ello
del futuro como del pasado”.
“A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well”.
dark
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
hopeful
reflective
fast-paced