Anti-Expertism

A lovely poem suggested to me, after a similar complaint.

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year’s horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.

A few choice phrases that struck me during my (at least!) yearly T.S. Eliot read:

The Wastland, III. The Fire Sermon
The nymphs are departed.

Ash-Wednesday
Why should I mourn
The Vanished power of the usual reign?
—-
And neither division nor unity
Matters. This is the land. We have our inheritance.

Gerontion
I have no ghosts, an old man in a draughty house under a windy knob.

Mr. Eliot’s Sunday Morning Service
Along the garden-wall the bees>br />
With hairy bellies pass between
The Staminate and pistillate,
Blest office of the epicene.

Burnt Norton
The dance along the artery
The circulation of the lymph[...]

Be remembered; involved with past and future.
Only through time time is conquered.

Ridiculous the waste sad time
Stretching before and after.