Harrowed

In the juvescence of the year
Came Christ the tiger…

I’m at the end now. Dust and ashes everywhere I turn; life reduced to mere movement persisted in for its own sake, because without it there is nothing distinguishable from death. It’s time to be gone from here. Why can’t I go? Why isn’t it enough?

Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain…

- You’ve thought very long and hard about it…

Well, yes – you’ve seen it all.

And I pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again…

- I’ve seen a lot of strutting and fretting. I’ve seen a distracted, inattentive father and a difficult husband; a negligent worker, an introverted and inconstant friend…

Yes. I’m sorry.

- Others have paid for your high-minded conclusions.

I know. And the conclusions – they’re still not enough.

- Quite so.

Empty shuttles weave the wind

I’m sorry for the cost.

- I see that you are; but as for these “conclusions” themselves - they concern ideas and attitudes you once made your own. Do your conclusions touch your heart, or only your head? To take a man out of TradWorld is easy, but useless if TradWorld remains in the man…

I see. Metanoia.

- Yes. You know the word. You know lots of words.

Ouch.

It’s still not enough, is it Father?

- No.

Because I do not hope to turn

What more must I do?

- You must die. Go down to the place of blind, unarticulating silence. Lie there in the hands you cannot see or feel, of one whose voice you can no longer hear.

I am already dead.

These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.

- Yes – and for some time now. Enough. Nunc hiems transiit.

Arise!

Christ has risen from the dead,
By death He has trampled on death
And to those in the graves
Given life.

What seas what shores what grey rocks and what islands
What water lapping the bow
And scent of pine and the woodthrush singing through the fog
What images return
O my daughter…

Quotations: TS Eliot - Gerontion, The Waste Land, Ash Wednesday, Marina