On Reading the Four Quartets

Author(s): Jean Wahl

Source: Poetry , Mar., 1949, Vol. 73, No. 6 (Mar., 1949), p. 317
Published by: Poetry Foundation

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20590777

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ON READING THE FOUR QUARTETS

Better than praying on the tomb of the mother,

Is to say yes to this world,
And to seal it with our will.
Not to be protected,
Not to be redeemed,
Not to be deceived,
Not to be healed.
We go in time with beginnings and ends
Which are past and present and future in turn,
And in times which are no more in time.
May we go with much consciousness
(And at times much unconsciousness)
Bearing much reality,
Not knowing anything which is unmovable cause,
Not knowing any lotus or lethe
(Except the lethe we create in ourselves by our will and
voluntary un-will),
Not loving renunciation or repentance,
But knowing the way of dispossession and loving it,
Knowing the final adequacy of the moment and the one
who lives it,
Hoping, loving, waiting,
Being when we are not.
We taste of some moments preternatural, although in
nature,
We see the pattern and live it,
We live our own successive deaths,
And that is living our lives.
Jean Wahl

317

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