Missa in Angustiis (Mass for troubled times)

Time present and time past / Are both perhaps present in time future, / And time future contained in time past. If all time is eternally present / All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction Remaining a perpetual possibility / Only in a world of speculation. What might have been and what has been / Point to one end, which is always present. Footfalls echo in the memory / Down the passage which we did not take / Towards the door we never opened / Into the rose-garden. My words echo Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves / I do not know.

– T.S. Eliot (Burnt Norton)