Mapzen Blog Mapzen Post Mortem I

The Seventh Seal, Danse MacabreO dark dark dark. They all go into the dark,The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant,The captains, merchant bankers, eminent men of letters,The generous patrons of art, the statesmen and the rulers,Distinguished civil servants, chairmen of many committees,Industrial lords and petty contractors, all go into the dark,And dark the Sun and Moon, and the Almanach de GothaAnd the Stock Exchange Gazette, the Directory of Directors,And cold the sense and lost the motive of action.And we all go with them, into the silent funeral,Nobody's funeral, for there is no one to bury.I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon youWhich shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre,The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changedWith a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness on darkness,And we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panoramaAnd the bold imposing facade are all being rolled away -Or as, when an underground train, in the tube, stops too long between stationsAnd the conversation rises and slowly fades into silenceAnd you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepenLeaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about;Or when, under ether, the mind is conscious but conscious of nothing-I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hopeFor hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without loveFor love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faithBut the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasyNot lost, but requiring, pointing to the agonyOf death and birth. You say I am repeatingSomething I have said before. I shall say it again,Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there,To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not, You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.In order to arrive at what you do not know You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.In order to possess what you do not possess You must go by the way of dispossession.In order to arrive at what you are not You must go through the way in which you are not.And what you do not know is the only thing you knowAnd what you own is what you do not ownAnd where you are is where you are not.-T.S. Eliot from "The Four Quartets" - East Coker III