©2003 BASID #566 ©2003 BASID #568 Beth Ames Swartz The Fire and the Rose Are One: And the fire and the rose are one acrylic on canvas 48" x 60" (1.22m x 1.52m) 2003 Beth Ames Swartz The Fire and the Rose: Being between two lives acrylic on canvas 60" x 60" (1.52m x 1.52m) 2003 And all manner of things shall be well When the tongues of flame are in-folded Into the crowned knot of fire And the fire and the rose are one.   There are three conditions which often look alike Yet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow: Attachment to self and to things and to persons, detachment From self and from things and from persons; and, growing Between them indifference Which resembles the others as death resembles life, Being between two lives — unflowering, between The live and the dead nettle. This is the use of memory: For liberation — not less of love but expanding Of love beyond desire, and so liberation From the future as well as the past. Eliot, T. S. The Complete Poems and Plays 1909-1950, (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1952), Four Quartets: Little Gidding, V, p.145.   Eliot, T. S. The Complete Poems and Plays 1909-1950, (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1952), Four Quartets: Little Gidding, III, p.142