Finality: An Ode to Eliot

Finality: An Ode to Eliot

T.S. Fowler

I.
If you were found in October,
Somewhere in between park and place
Caught amidst idle dreams and doubt,
Frail visions dancing in and out. 
Perhaps the poets had it right,
You too will die with the dying
Leaves, ‘ashes of youth’ soon dispersed
Giving yourself back to earth.

II.
If you wondered in November
Half asleep through city gardens
Between supplication and space,
A once pregnant, now barren place,
Where death and dirt perform a dirge
Over your fickle mortal frame.
You know, I know, we know, the end
For pauper or pope will not bend.

III.
Incandescent autumnal fire
Only makes the finitude bite,
Like thick frost on December morn,
Knowing we will die and be torn.
Yet, if you are the honest sort,
Sailing to Grey Havens is no
Final resort. Mortality,
Like autumn, reminds violently,
That to outlive kin and country,
Friends and family is but curse.
A futile, yet immortal chase 
Waits for finalities embrace.

IV.
But when you find yourself amidst
Your bleak, final January
Not knowing by which way you came,
Now, recall Eliot’s refrain:
‘In my end is my beginning’
Inside our primeval garden,
The first day of eternal spring,
Blooms aside pauper, pope, and King;
This old land you already knew,
As you were sitting beneath the Yew,
Breath from Eden filling each lung,
Calling out when the world was young.

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T.S. Fowler
Poet & Teacher

T.S. Teaches Literature, Rhetoric, and Composition at a college preparatory school in Austin, TX. He also publishes regularly in The Mimetic Journal on Substack. You can read more of his work at https://tsfowler.substack.com/

Photography by Rob Potter