Loss
I was taken by surprise to hear that Notre Dame Cathedral was burning. Something of such magnificence deserves to exist forever, does it not? My spirit believes that some things ought to be exempt from the erosion of time, and the common accidents that occur during renovations. Was the cause an errant spark, a frayed power cord of a contractors tool? It doesn’t matter. Knowing would not change a thing. Nothing is exempt from the inexorable grind of time, or the wild-hare contingency of this world. How many times have you and I been lucky? Then one day our luck runs out. That has to happen only once.
I am saddened that I have not traveled to Paris to see Notre Dame. Now when we do go, I’ll never see it. The replica which President Macron pledges to build, will be a replica, not the one constructed out of devotion by Medieval craftsmen.
The loss occurred during holy week. To me that is significant. Christianity is the religious tradition of the West. In particular Christianity is the official religion of the empire maintained by the United States. “God’n country,”–you’ve heard the formula. What a strange contemplation. Jesus, a partisan for the dispossessed, is claimed by the anti-immigrant, pro nationalist segment of Americans as their patron. They support the policies of the current administration unreservedly.
Loss is inevitable though, on all accounts. Empire is an exploitative arrangement that impoverishes those without power. Middle class comfort, the “American Dream,” comes at the expense of peoples we do not see.
Empires eventually fall. The logic of loss is built in.
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,
And dark the Sun and Moon, and the Almanach de Gotha
And 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 you
Which shall be the darkness of God.
excerpt from East Coker by T. S. Eliot
One thought on “Loss”
If I’m remembering correctly, East Coker is a part of the Quartets volume and was written near the apex of his career. The words in Quartets are dark, but also, they include a poignancy of meditation, beautifully expressed and clearly heartfelt. I don’t know if Mr. Eliot was an overly religious man, even knowing that he joined the Anglican church upon moving to England, but my sense is that his beliefs were rooted in the souls of his fellow humans more than in the traditions of religious dogma.
As to your own poignant eulogy for Notre Dame, your words are eloquent and heartfelt as well. Time is a cruel master, but as noted by both you and Mr. Eliot, there is no avoiding the inevitable, regardless of stature, rank or education. As I am wont to do now and then on your blog, I am offering my own piece of writing that seems apropos of your thoughts. The poem below was written about 6 years ago and was inspired by a flight over rural Mexico.
Descending
From five miles above,
the brown hardscrabble land
feigns a tranquil, glamorous demeanor,
as the metal roofs of shacks
glisten with a diamond’s fire.
Weathered remnants of
once majestic mountains,
now eaten by the rain, cover the ground like giant rough-textured sheets.
I understand how we stay aloft,
the physics, the dynamics of air on wing,
but I still wonder;
if the air grew tired
and felt enough was enough,
would the ground beckon.
Would the rocks call out,
“We have been waiting for you
ever since the rivers washed away our sins.”
In those few moments
I would not curse the air
for growing tired,
since I am weary too.
I would not blame the rocks
for wanting company,
since they too know sorrow,
or at least I want to believe they do.
At last, the ephemeral
nature of nature is again exposed,
as the metal roofs continue to gleam.
And just as the mountains will
one day complete their
journey to the sea,
time will erode the deeds of men,
and all that counts is now.