THE PILGRIMAGE

At Little Gidding

In memoriam R.R.

Wheat fields without end lead me

To a hamlet with a pig farm near the church

Where I made a prayer for you,

Who led me so deeply into the lives

Of the poets, living and dead – into Eliot’s

Orphean descent into the depths

Of known and less known worlds:

An almost willing letting go and the return

To grace after the deep descent. The purge

That became my freedom, too, to descend.

Like the consolation of bread and honey

After fasting, I too, felt the return of a moment’s

Grace into my veins with the vernal wind’s

Promise and the transcendent epiphany.