Little Gidding

Anna Larmoliuk

from Little Gidding

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. And every phrase
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others,
The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,
An easy commerce of the old and the new,
The common word exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
The complete consort dancing together)
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.
We die with the dying:
See, they depart, and we go with them.
We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them.
The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree
Are of equal duration. A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails
On a winter's afternoon, in a secluded chapel
History is now and England.




T.S. Eliot

I seem to be drawn by this beginning/ending or tail-in-mouth theme - (Fox Sleep by W.S. Merwin, Swimmer by Robert Francis), and anything to do with Beginning - (The Round by Stanley Kunitz, Begin by Brendan Kennelly, The Trees by Philip Larkin), so it shouldn't be any surprise that Little Gidding appeals as well. I can't get over it - "What we call the beginning is often the end..." - really, what an amazing thought. Is this a version of what is now called "reframing"? (All these ideas that are as old as the hills. We think we're coming up with something new, and look! there's the ghost of Great-Grandma rolling her eyes at us.) It's a good question - what is the difference between a beginning and an ending? "Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning, every poem an epitaph." Every poem an epitaph?!! Any action a step to the block?!! I have to think about that for a few more years. And then there's those remarkable lines, "We die with the dying: See, they depart and we go with them. (I can see that all right, but then he goes on -) We are born with the dead: See they return, and bring us with them."  Okay. Are we really? It's true in nature,sure, a fallen tree is host to a million lives, but to say that of humans is more difficult. Do I benefit from the dead who have gone before? Well, yes. Do they feed me with their experiences, do they nurture me? Yes, they do. Do they return through me? I suppose they do. Is that what he means? That we are linked, we are a cycle, we live within "a pattern of timeless moments"? I had thought of myself as more separate, more islanded in time than what Eliot is intimating. I had thought of the past as far away, as gone. But if every ending is a beginning and every beginning also an end, what is time? Certainly not the barrier it appears. Maybe it's more like a veil? "History is now.", says Eliot. That's heavy. It gives a rather uncomfortable weight to my actions. Thank goodness I can begin again. 

And again...


"This is where we start."