There’s a well trod path, that we all walk
During our ageing and our emerging times.
We walk at different paces, some slow,
Some deliberate; still faster still some other
As they seek the end of this unending path.
There is detritus strewn along the way
Telling stories of past travels or waypoints
Of journeys not seen as destination.
Careless crisp packets, plastic, politically charged,
All discarded solicitously, privately in public.
This is here and yet everywhere in England.
Eliot describes another place,
another journey and another space:
Little Gidding is a moment captured,
An unobtrusive point not enraptured
By projected poetics but rather by
Metered phrase that catch the eye
And draw us to observe
Something shared to be conserved
A common condition of human life
That gives shape and direction to our strife.
We meet along the way, heading in direction different,
A cross point where divergence touch for a moment,
We meet in an awkward gaze and judgement made,
To speak and share or in silence part,
We generously nod and a pang of what could have been
Transports through my veins and I am undone.
I know she felt the same but sinful condition
Hindered us from turning back to make amends,
A relationship that would feed our journeys still.
Maybe we’ll meet in another time, another point
And reverse the regret at what still could be.
I’m left with Eliot still wrestling
With endings and beginnings.
“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.”
Written on 18th January 2020.