Sunday, May 21, 2017

Too late


Harold Bloom speaks of ‘aftering’—the gnawing thought that we have always, somehow, arrived after the event. The artist is there for the event all right; but the memory of it flies even as he writes it down or tries to make art out of it. In that sense, as T S Eliot says, every poem is an epitaph; not the living message but the words etched on the gravestone of whatever passed, and passed on. 

Some of our gravestones are very beautiful.

No comments: