Sniper Bullet
The Dry Salvages
by T. S. Eliot
Stanza II
The backward look behind the assurance
Of recorded history, the backward half-look
Over the shoulder, towards the primitive terror.
Now, we come to discover that the moments of agony
(Whether, or not, due to misunderstanding,
Having hoped for the wrong things or dreaded the wrong things,
Is not in question) are likewise permanent
With such permanence as time has. We appreciate this better
In the agony of others, nearly experienced,
Involving ourselves, than in our own.
For our own past is covered by the currents of action,
But the torment of others remains an experience
Unqualified, unworn by subsequent attrition.
People change, and smile: but the agony abides.
Time the destroyer is time the preserver,
Like the river with its cargo of dead negroes, cows and chicken coops,
The bitter apple, and the bite in the apple.
And the ragged rock in the restless waters,
Waves wash over it, fogs conceal it;
On a halcyon day it is merely a monument,
In navigable weather it is always a seamark
To lay a course by, but in the sombre season
Or the sudden fury, is what it always was.
I joined the Socrates Café meeting, taking a seat at the end of a long table. The evening’s topic was pain/suffering and the possibility of deriving precious lessons from such experiences. A member of our table of insisted that pain and suffering is anomalous to our human potential and that “in time” humanity will solve this problem. Then, time becomes meaningless since death is no longer feared, as a hard constraint…
My response to the assertion was not magnanimous. In retrospect I’d like to be more open to such a blissful future. I know that I cannot. There are a variety of tranquilizing substances/practices to distract the mind away from the sharp-edged facticity of this life as I and my ancestors have known it to be. A conviction that we are on the way to “figuring it out” fails to get the job done for me.
Eliot’s concluding line of this stanza comes as an echo, – like the snap of a high-ballistic sniper bullet close to my ear.
What tune will serve as our lifeline for today? This one. (I just) Died In Your Arms by Cutting Crew. Another version of our “sniper’s bullet”?
