Here At the Center

Here at the center there is a spinning,
a unicorn spike of time that bends
around the circles of our lives
as though one can see several

eras winding their way down
the river and we have only to step
out into the brown waters to be born
into a particular eddy of time,

spinning, spinning, come out
circling in the winning of a new
life for this soul of yours. What
would you see this time around?

Here at the center there is a refinement
that must be figured, must be arranged,
for all those who would venture outward,
back into the muddy channels to bring

another soul forth to be judged, where
it is difficult to determine if one judges
the beginning of a new life or the completion
of the old, the circles being thus entwined.

Artist's Notes

T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) was arguably the most influential poet of the 20th century. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Eliot was educated at Harvard, but then moved to England where he became a British citizen in 1927. Best known for his poems "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," and "The Waste Land," Eliot was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1948. According to Eliot's instructions, his tomb was engraved with the phrase, 'in the beginning is my end, in the end is my beginning.'