28 jan

So promise me one thing, would you? Just don’t make me any promises.
Part of the lyrics of the song Promises, Promises from the musical with that title.
And then there are resolutions, which should be treated in the same way.
Plan only one thing, don’t make a plan.
One of the things Julie and I planned to to on this trip was reading each other a poem. First it would have been my turn, then Julie’s. This plan never blossomed. It wasn’t even seeded, one might say.
I was reminded of this when I passed the long table in the dining room, cluttered with my books, including a stack with poems to be read to each other. My eye caught the volume of collected poems by TS Eliot, the poet of whom I had found a very readable biography by Peter Ackroyd – the one of ‘London’ and ‘Thames’ fame – and I had just heard mom talk about a movie she got from her granddaughter Mollie and had seen and enjoyed, kind of, the life story is a little disturbing, as the lifes of poets often are.
I started reading ‘Choruses from the Rock’, because I have always liked the sentences:
….
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
…
I am not a very good poetry reader. It is often too vague for me. I get distracted after a few lines. This Rock poem is about 15 pages, much more tha I can stomach normally.
But this time it was different. Partly because of the accessible language. Eliot himself hardly considered it a poem, something in between play and poem. He didn’t consider it a very good piece, but I liked it.
How couldn’t I with sentences like the above.
Or:
I journeyed to London, to the timekept City,
Where the River flows, with foreign flotations.
There I was told, we have too many churches,
And too few chop-houses….

Or:
However you disguise it, this thing does not change:
The perpetual struggle of Good and Evil.

Or:
What life have you if you have not life together?
There is no life that is not in community…

Or:
I have given you hands which you turn from worship
I have given you speech, for endless palaver
I have given you my Law, and you set up commissions
I have given you lips, to express friendly sentiments
I have given you hearts, for reciprocal distrust
I have given you power of choice, and you only alternate

Or:
O weariness of men who turn from GOD
To the grandeur of your mind and the glory of your action
To arts and inventions and daring enterprises
To schemes of human greatness thoroughly discredited
Binding the earth and the water to your service
Dividing the stars into common and preferred
Engaged in devising the perfect refrigerator
Engaged in working out a rational morality
Engaged in printing as many books of possible

Or:
It is hard for those who live near a Bank
To doubt the security of their money

Or:
Why should men love the Church? Why should they love her laws
She tells them of Life and Death, and of all that they would forget
She is tender when where they would be hard, and hard where they like to be soft
She tells them of Evil and Sin, and other unpleasant facts
They constantly try to escape
From the darkness outside and within
By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good

And on and on.

Eliot was a religious man, without believing, if I understand Ackroyd right. His dissatisfaction with society was caused greatly with the troubles of his personal life.
In the Rock he is preaching quite a bit. Some of it is a little tedious, to express it strongly. But I recognize his concerns, I find them stimulating.

One more quote:
Our age is an age of moderate virtue
And of moderate vice

And a last one:
For this is the law of Life; and you must remember that while there is time of prosperity
The people will neglect the Temple, and in time of adversity they will decry it.

Mark, this was all written in 1934.