“Each day a raid on the inarticulate--T.S. Eliot”

“We shall not cease from explorationAnd the end of all our exploringWill be to arrive where we startedAnd know the place for the first time.Through the unknown, remembered gateWhen the last of earth left to discoverIs that which was the beginning;At the source of the longest riverThe voice of the hidden waterfallAnd the children in the apple-treeNot known, because not looked forBut heard, half-heard, in the stillnessBetween two waves of the sea.—T.S. Eliot, from “Little Gidding,” Four Quartets (Gardners Books; Main edition, April 30, 2001) Originally published 1943.”

“So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years-Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres-Trying to use words, and every attemptIs a wholy new start, and a different kind of failureBecause one has only learnt to get the better of wordsFor the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in whichOne is no longer disposed to say it. And so each ventureIs a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate,With shabby equipment always deterioratingIn the general mess of imprecision of feeling,Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquerBy strength and submission, has already been discoveredOnce or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hopeTo emulate - but there is no competition -There is only the fight to recover what has been lostAnd found and lost again and again: and now, under conditionsThat seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.”

“I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me.”

“I have heard the key Turn in the door once and turn once only We think of the key, each in his prison Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison”

“Of lovers whose bodies smell of each other Who think the same thoughts without need of speech”

“Our emotionsAre only “incidents”In the effort to keep day and night together.”