from the wit of the staircase

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 attempt

Is a wholly new start, and a different kind

of failure

Because one has only learnt to get the better

of words

For the thing one no longer has to say, or

the way in which

One is no longer disposed to say it. And so

each venture

Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate,

With shabby equipment always deteriorating

In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,

Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what

there is to conquer

By strength and submission, has already

been discovered

Once or twice, or several times, by men whom

one cannot hope

To emulate - but there is no competition -

There is only the fight to recover

what has been lost

And 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.

--T. S. Eliot

East Coker

Four Quartets