Ash Wednesday

The single Rose
Is now the Garden
Where all loves end
Terminate torment
Of love unsatisfied
The greater torment
Of love satisfied
End of the endless
Journey to no end
Conclusion of all that
Is inconclusible
Speech without word and
Word of no speech

from Ash Wednesday by T S Eliot. Read the full poem here. A Wikipedia article on the poem here.

In his Poetry Review article Poetry In A Post-Secular Age which I mentioned yesterday poet Michael Symmons Roberts writes: "Another timely and powerful approach is to risk a greater reach, bigger statements, so there has never been a better time to ignore the workshop cliché ‘avoid abstracts’. Rather than avoid them, reach for them and renew them, or change their terms of reference. Some of the more abstruse bits of doctrine can offer a language or image with rich potential for reinvention and retelling". Read the full article here

An Ash Wednesday poem by John Keble (1792 - 1866) here.