Poets.
By Chris Ingham

With both apologies and thanks to T. S. Eliot. Apologies because I have drawn
upon some of his images from Burnt Norton and Little Gidding, poems from the
Four Quartets, and thanks for the inspiration he has always provided for me,
as a poet.

We sit, silently in the depths
Of night, comfortably alone
In the blue enfolding burkas
Of our minds, myopic, gazing
Perpetually through the mesh
Of our endless speculation,
Searching always for elusive
Might have beens in time past
And grasping at some time future
Where we can dance, be the still point
Of Eliot's ever turning world,
Complete: "Neither flesh nor fleshless". *

So, we seek always to avoid
The spectre of reality,
Searching the rose garden of dreams,
Never realising that the end
Of our search can only lead back
To the ever present moment
Of our suppressed reality.

* From T. S. Eliot, Burnt Norton.