Ash Wednesday does not believe in me and continues each year to mark the ending of something, no beginning appears before the altar.
"Lady, no one listens. Only old bones around which the tigers race and find no sustenance."
"At the first turning of the third stair
Was a slotted window bellied like the figs's fruit
And beyond the hawthorn blossom and a pasture scene
The broadbacked figure drest in blue and green
Enchanted the maytime with an antique flute."
The piper plays but there is no enchantment, only old bones whistling in the day's wind. And I shall grade papers and read "Ash Wednesday" and this day will pass, smudges on foreheads the only indication of a belief that surrenders to the winds of the present. There is no past, Santayana, only a now and in this now old forms, old rituals are performed as public spectacle.
My student reaches one of a dozen priests and stands silent, his finger marking a cross on her forehead. She turns and wanders away, joins her friends. They talk of last night's dance, the club, the DJ, the mixing of this piece with that. They wear black on their heads as a transient symbol they cannot begin to understand.
"Blown hair is sweet, brown hair over the mouth blown,
Lilac and brown hair;
Distraction, music of the flute, stops and steps of the mind over the third stair,
Fading, fading; strength beyond hope and despair
Climbing the third stair."
But the riser is steep and long and the purchase flat, unyielding. They stumble on something they cannot see and not seeing fail to comprehend. This is the third stair, not the first, a stair of light overcome by shadow.
Hollow people do not give way, do not open themselves for what is unseen, wear only clothing, a façade, a face put on to meet other faces, a mark of some vague kind of association. Because I do not dare to hope.
"The silent sister veiled in white and blue
Between the yews, behind the garden god,
Whose flute is breathless, bent her head and signed but spoke no word
But the fountain sprang up and the bird sang down
Redeem the time, redeem the dream
The token of the word unheard, unspoken"
The sister screams, comes out from behind the old symbol of the yew, but no one cares. A moment in the now that vanishes so quickly that the figure in blue and white fades to gray. There is no then now, only a moment followed by a moment which the next moment will replace. At the last turning of the third stair.
"O my people, what have I done unto thee.
Where shall the word be found, where will the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence
Not on the sea or on the islands, not
On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land,
For those who walk in darkness
Both in the day time and in the night time
The right time and the right place are not here
No place of grace for those who avoid the face
No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the voice"
Darkness at noon. And in that darkness few can see the word, the words passing over their heads. And here, in spite of all that now, Eliot finds room for hope: not in some exalting flash of light that blinds him, but in the persistence of things, in the persistence of ritual, in the lasting nature of mystery.
"Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still"
We know enough not to care. We sit still. Nothing blows across us that remains. No moment of warm wind penetrates. My students smoke and listen to some other music, do not think about things that last because they know no referent. And yet.
"And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated
And let my cry come unto Thee."
God or not, something speaks, some form of otherness arises and a desire for community brings drifting people together for some reason, separated from something, gods or each other, something pulls together, attracts.
It is Ash Wednesday and my 11:20 class has been canceled. I do not mind the cancellation, do not, myself, participate in the ritual. But I read a poem again, one of the great poems of the century and I let myself doodle on the keyboard. Doctors' appointments again. Routine checkups, physicals, blood drawn here to be analyzed there, EKGs, PSAs, all manner of tests that can be symbols, that are symbols. Teach us to care and not to care / teach us to sit still.
