onsdag 20. mai 2009

Tid for TSE

På høy tid med litt lyrikk i Dekodet.

Og hva kan da passe bedre enn den mystisk modernistiske ortodokse skeptikeren T.S. Eliot?

Hans Fire kvartetter er som alltid mer aktuelle enn overskriftene i din lokale tabloid. Ikke minst i en tid der New Age overgår Nye Ateister med en logaritme eller to.

Og stadig flere tilskyndes (som det het før i tiden) av snusfornuft og scientisme, for ikke å si Dan Brown, til en stadig sterkere forelskelse i det gnostiske - og TVNorgiske.

Og glemmer inkarnasjonen og den betydningsfulle jord.






















To communicate with Mars, converse with spirits,
To report the behaviour of the sea monster,
Describe the horoscope, haruspicate or scry,
Observe disease in signatures, evoke
Biography from the wrinkles of the palm
And tragedy from fingers; release omens
By sortilege, or tea leaves, riddle the inevitable
With playing cards, fiddle with pentagrams
Or barbituric acids, or dissect
The recurrent image into pre-conscious terrors-
To explore the womb, or tomb, or dreams; all these are usual
Pastimes and drugs, and features of the press:
And always will be, some of them especially
Whether on the shores of Asia, or in the Edgware Road,
Men's curiosity searches past and future
And clings to that dimension. But to apprehend
The point of intersection of the timeless
With time, is an occupation for the saint—
No occupation either, but something given
And taken, in a lifetime's death in love,
Ardour and selflessness and self-surrender.

For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time,
The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning
Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts. These are only hints and guesses,
Hints followed by guesses; and the rest
Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action.
The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation.

Here the impossible union
Of spheres of evidence is actual,
Here the past and future
Are conquered, and reconciled,
Where action were otherwise movement
Of that which is only moved
And has in it no source of movement—
Driven by daemonic, chthonic
Powers. And right action is freedom
From past and future also.

For most of us, this is the aim
Never here to be realised;
Who are only undefeated
Because we have gone on trying;
We, content at the last
If our temporal reversion nourish
(Not too far from the yew-tree)
The life of significant soil.

Bedre kan det i grunnen ikke sies etter en kveld med Star Trek III - The Search for Spock.

Ihvertfall hvis man ikke er vulkaner.

1 kommentar:

  1. Nydelig. Minner litt om vår egen Andre Bjerke:

    Det største mysterium er ikke mer
    enn det: at en ørliten kropp
    er våknet til jorden. Den nyfødte ser.
    To luker i himmelen går opp.

    Selv fem-trinns-raketter og kjernefysikk
    blir puslingers puslespill
    når det nyfødte barn med et eneste blikk
    beviser at Gud er til.

    SvarSlett