You cannot face it steadily

And a time to walk around clutching an old yellowing copy of Four Quartets, as if at the very last straw.

"You cannot face it steadily, but this thing is sure,
That time is no healer: the patient is no longer here.

When the train starts, and the passengers are settled
To fruit, periodicals and business letters
(And those who saw them off have left the platform)
Their faces relax from grief into relief,
To the sleepy rhythm of a hundred hours.

Fare forward, travellers! not escaping from the past
Into different lives, or into any future;
You are not the same people who left that station
Or who will arrive at any terminus,
While the narrowing rails slide together behind you;
And on the deck of the drumming liner
Watching the furrow that widens behind you,

You shall not think 'the past is finished'
Or 'the future is before us'."

From 'The Dry Salvages', 'Four Quartets' by T.S.Eliot