At The Still Point, There The Dance

I Think We Are In Rats’ Alley Where The Dead Men Lost Their Bones.

The Business Of The Poet Is Not To Find New Emotions, But To Use The Ordinary Ones And, In Working Them Up Into Poetry, To Express Feelings Which Are Not In Actual Emotions At All.

We Have All Our Private Terrors, Our Particular Shadows, Our Secret Fears. We Are Afraid In A Fear Which We Cannot Face, Which None Understands, And Our Hearts Are Torn From Us, Our Brains Unskinned Like The Layers Of An Onion, Ourselves The Last.

Footfalls Echo In The Memory, Down The Passage We Did Not Take, Towards The Door We Never Opened, Into The Rose Garden.

There Are Flood And Drought Over The Eyes And In The Mouth, Dead Water And Dead Sand Contending For The Upper Hand. The Parched Eviscerate Soil Gapes At The Vanity Of Toil, Laughs Without Mirth. This Is The Death Of The Earth.