The Fire of Four

With love, simply, for these two lines:


'If all time is eternally present


All time is unredeemable.' - Burnt Norton, TS Eliot







Verse IV of poem IV of the 'Four Quartets' by TS Eliot.

From 'Little Gidding':


IV



The dove descending breaks the air

With flame of incandescent terror

Of which the tongues declare

The one discharge from sin and error.

The only hope, or else despair

Lies in the choice of pyre of pyre—

To be redeemed from fire by fire.



Who then devised the torment? Love.

Love is the unfamiliar Name

Behind the hands that wove

The intolerable shirt of flame

Which human power cannot remove.

We only live, only suspire

Consumed by either fire or fire.