Poetry Mondays: East Coker

I spent Saturday night lost in London. It was my fault, really: in a hurry, I jotted down an incorrect address and ended up halfway across town, fruitlessly searching for a (non-existant) bowling alley. Eventually I realized my error and popped back on the Tube to head westbound, disgruntled.

When I (finally) got back on the Tube, I was seated next to a young woman thoroughly engrossed in a book. I was curious as to what she was reading: I could make out that it was poetry, but not the text of the book. (Snooping thwarted!). But, even without being able to divine her book choice, it made me think about how I rarely read poetry.

So! Poetry Mondays!

And, to kick it off, a passage from T.S. Eliot's "East Coker". As winter approaches and the days get shorter and shorter, I'm reminded of the following passage:

O 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.

(The full text can be found here.)