So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years-<br />Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres-<br />Trying to use words, and every attempt<br />Is a wholy new start, and a different kind of failure<br />Because one has only learnt to get the better of words<br />For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which<br />One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture<br />Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate,<br />With shabby equipment always deteriorating<br />In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,<br />Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer<br />By strength and submission, has already been discovered<br />Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope<br />To emulate - but there is no competition -<br />There is only the fight to recover what has been lost<br />And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions<br />That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.<br />For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.