"From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled"
-- from "Little Gidding" in the Four Quartets, by T S Eliot (a favorite of +Fr Matthew Baker)
So today in the dim blue light pooling behind the blinds,
I could not escape the dull echo that contradicted the silly reveries
Of twilight morning, an echo that only an empty house makes
When the door is knocked but no one comes because
No one is there to come.
The fancies of lucid dreaming at half-past four were welcome respite
From the knowledge of an empty hall behind the door,
Even the nonsense of bus trips to cloud cuckoo land were better
Than the dawn's mourning.
No, the fact, stark, an empty door
Stood closed, still.
Sleep did not change it
As I always wish
Contrary to fact.
The door used to open, quickly, at any hour.
Flannery O'Connor in the afternoon light and
Once he mentioned Eliot and then pages and pages of symposia
Footnoted footnotes, and of course Barth and Bonhoeffer
And Florovsky.
All freely offered. All freely given, summaries and definitions,
Names and scholars and little academic momentos
That make thought and conversation and friendship
Exhilarating. So much to do, so much to believe,
So much hope and maybe the future was
Possible.
The door was open, then
And now the echo,
Now the footsteps fading into distance.
Today in blue snow light the night remained,
And people who invent and practice hell
Remain and they who enter the poetry of
Heaven did not, this time.
So says the morning.
Let the Day come.
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