An Excerpt from East Coker

from The Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot

In my beginning is my end.  In succession
Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,
Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place
Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.
Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires,
Old fire to ashes, and ashes to the earth
Which is already flesh, fur and faeces,
Bones of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf.
Houses live and die: there is a time for building
And a time for living and for generation
And a time for the wind to break the loosened pane
And to shake the wainscot where the field-mouse trots
And to shake the tattered arras woven with a silent motto.

–Read at St. Lydia’s on October 2