Santa Catalina Foggy Morning — Image by kenne
The only wisdom we can hope to acquire
Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.
— from Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot
Archive for the ‘Four Quartets’ Tag
Santa Catalina Foggy Morning Leave a comment
This Is Us 3 comments
This Is Us In Chamoisee Glaze
There is, it seems to us,
A best, only a limited value
In the knowledge derived from experience.
The knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsifies,
For the pattern is new in every moment
And every moment is a new and shocking
Valuation of all we have been.
— from Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot
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Driving Into Tanuri Ridge 1 comment
A Rainbow As Seen Driving Into Tanuri Ridge — Image by kenne
What might have been
and what has been
point to one end,
which is always present.
— from Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot
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Flycatcher Art: The Unattended Moment Leave a comment
Flycatcher in Flight — Photo-Artistry by kenne
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.
— from Four Quartets, “The Dry Salvages” by T. S. Eliot
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Sullivan Island Beach Scene 1 comment
Sullivan’s Island Beach — Photo-Artistry by kenne
"Let me disclose the gifts reserved for age To set a crown upon your lifetime's effort. First, the cold friction of expiring sense Without enchantment, offering no promise But bitter tastelessness of shadow fruit As body and soul begin to fall asunder. Second, the conscious impotence of rage At human folly, and the laceration Of laughter at what ceases to amuse. And last, the rending pain of re-enactment Of all that you have done, and been; the shame Of motives late revealed, and the awareness Of things ill done and done to others' harm Which once you took for exercise of virtue."
-- T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets
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Shore Life 1 comment
Shore Life — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
— from Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot
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Dead Tree Near Desert Wash Leave a comment
Dead Tree Near Desert Wash — Image by kenne
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. These are only hints and guesses,
Hints followed by guesses; and the rest
Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action.
The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation.
— from Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot
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Fallen Leaves Leave a comment
Fallen Leaves On Mt. Lemmon — Photo-Artistry by kenne
In my beginning is my end. Now the light falls
Across the open field, leaving the deep lane
Shuttered with branches, dark in the afternoon,
Where you lean against a bank while a van passes,
And the deep lane insists on the direction
Into the village, in the electric heat
Hypnotised. In a warm haze the sultry light
Is absorbed, not refracted, by grey stone.
The dahlias sleep in the empty silence.
Wait for the early owl.
— from Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot
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Mountain Wildflowers Leave a comment
Wildflowers on Mt. Lemmon, Santa Catalina Mountains — Images by kenne
What is the late November doing
With the disturbance of the spring
And creatures of the summer heat,
And snowdrops writhing under feet
And hollyhocks that aim too high
Red into grey and tumble down
Late roses filled with early snow?
Thunder rolled by the rolling stars
Simulates triumphal cars
Deployed in constellated wars
Scorpion fights against the sun
Until the Sun and Moon go down
Comets weep and Leonids fly
Hunt the heavens and the plains
Whirled in a vortex that shall bring
The world to that destructive fire
Which burns before the ice-cap reigns
— from Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot
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A Tucson Sunset 2 comments
A Tucson Sunset — Image by kenne
In my beginning is my end. Now the light falls
Across the open field, leaving the deep lane
Shuttered with branches, dark in the afternoon,
Where you lean against a bank while a van passes,
And the deep lane insists on the direction
Into the village, in the electric heat
Hypnotised.
— from Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot
Eliot’s Four Quartets rests on my desk not only because I love his poetic masterpiece
but because my first copy was given to me by my brother, Tom, who wrote
“. . . I’ve become obsessed with it . . . with time . . . with memory . . . with language,
all of which are concentrated in this work. It has become such a part of me.”
Tom went on to write — “To use a few of Eliot’s words; ‘As we grow older the world
becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated . . . ‘ Complications, ambiguities, non sequitur
I keep searching for clarity . . . lucidity, and I know each time I seek that, I’ll
become more entangled. No. I’m not bored—just Scarred. I’m moving toward a sort-of silence . . .
I know what you’re thinking: ‘Bull-shit!’ Since the significant things, I want to say
have the wrong inflections, intonations for most arenas of conversation;
I ramble on into oblivion. A series of non sequitur.” (7/27/84)
I miss Tom.
— kenne
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Old Western Morning 1 comment
Old Western Morning (Sonoran Desert) — Photo-Artistry by kenne
We have taken from the defeated
What they had to leave us — a symbol:
A symbol perfected in death.
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
By the purification of the motive
I the ground of our beseeching.
— from Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot
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Two-Windows 1 comment
Two-Windows (Tucson Arizona) — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Go, go, go, said the bird: humankind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
— from Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot
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Voiceless Wailing Leave a comment
Voiceless Wailing — Photo-Artistry by kenne
There is no end of it, the voiceless wailing,
No end to the withering of withered flowers,
To the movement of pain that is painless and motionless,
To the drift of the sea and the drifting wreckage, . . .
— T. S. Eliot
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Esperero Trail In Sabino Canyon 2 comments
Esperero Trail In Sabino Canyon — Image by kenne
We shall not cease from exploration,
and the end of all our exploring
will be to arrive where we started
and know the place for the first time.
— T.S. Eliot
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And All Shall Be Well . . . 5 comments
Sabino Canyon with T.S. Eliot line from Four Quartets (September 4, 2015) — Image by kenne
