With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling

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.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree

Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always–
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

• T.S. Eliot , Little Gidding 1942

The Little Gidding is the last of T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets. For a good biographical site on Eliot and some analysis of his poetry, go to the Academy of American Poet’s website.

 

The Photographer’s Reflection

There is revelation in every moment; all pursuit of knowledge is simple and complex; the human search for meaning…The history of 160 years reflected in a farmhouse window; a poem written timelessly in time 80 years after the sacred ground of Virginia’s battlefield was soaked with suffering in 1862; words & windows of light and shadows and more yet also in the context of other wars; rhythmic spiritual words of philosophy & psychology resonating 80 autumns later through senses into a mind and heart and soul who seeks in our layered momemts; a fine line between revelation and what we may call rational reality.