Wait Without Hope
Wait Without Hope
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But 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 ecstasy
Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony
Of death and birth.
Translation by José Emilio Pacheco
Excerpt taken from East Coker, the second poem of TS Eliot’s Four Quartets. Eliot finished this poem in February 1940, and it was published in March that year in the Easter edition of the New English Weekly. Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot, Copyright © 1943, ISBN-13: 978-0156332255
Reflection on poem
In solidarity, I take this poem to heart during these difficult days. TS Eliot wrote it during World War II, when things still looked dark, and yet… To me it speaks of not jumping to easy answers when I do not know what will happen, but to see the waiting itself as part of the journey of life, waiting to see how things work out for me, for my family, for my friends, for my neighbours, for my nation, for humanity…
Dan, March 2020
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Gracias por compartir este poema, Dani, que es indudablemente una obra atemporal y que nos muestra como bien dices que el sufrimiento, la espera y la incertidumbre en tiempos difíciles son experiencias cíclicas en la historia humana y que pueden producir también cosas bellas. Buscando otras traducciones de Four Quartets encontré que los que lo han traducido al francés y al español (en general poetas ellos mismos) hacen del ejercicio uno de re-escritura en sí y me gusta la idea de que este momento tan personal de Eliot se renueve cada vez que un poeta contemporáneo lo traduce… además claro, de cada vez que nosotros lectores nos identificamos en él.
Thanks for sharing the poem and your thoughts, Dan. I find it so helpful for today. Since the Spanish language gives two options for the word ‘esperar”, I found it instructive that you chose to use “wait” instead of “hope” in your commentary in keeping with the poem. When I sit down to reflect a bit, I am overwhelmed by sadness thinking of Madrid, Bergamo, and New York. From the same chair I can look out at the beautiful garden my wife has created, and something pushes up in my heart saying that there is Life and on it will continue.
I agree Craig. In the times we are living it seems impossible or unreasonable to hope or ask for something specific … because we are very likely to be disappointed and because we see so many other people who had been hoping for similar things that are now suffering. It seems our challenge in this moment is to hold the beauty and ugliness of life in balance and to patiently wait. I don’t believe we can wait without some hope, but in this waiting it is a hope that has no specific wanting, a hope that is a quiet accepting.
I’m going to hold to that phrase, Doug: a hope that is a quiet accepting. Thank you for it.
I think you’ve expressed some wise insights about his poem, especially these days when Coronavirus is the topic of every conversation and there seems to be a grasping for meaning in something that may simply defy explanation. Easy answers only trivialise any profound insights there may be for us to gain.
Many thanks for a great and deep poem and for enlightening comments. I find the label waiting very helpful to put on this time. It feels that every day we are plunged deeper into uncertainty about outcomes. Maybe it is a time to discover depth and richness in waiting, which we impossibly can reach when we are full of things that we can attain to and make happen.
I feel like this crisis is stretching me in ways I never wanted to be stretched. To hold on somehow to the idea that I and we will come out of this intact, that we will come out of this ‘together’, is no small effort for me, as some things, some lives, are lost along the way. Still, I am thankful for this virtual community where I can wait with others for better times, and to wonder if maybe the waiting itself will give something back to us, somehow.