Texting: American Literature

Showing posts with label American Literature. Show all posts

"Houses"-so the Wise Men tell me-

"Mansions"! Mansions must be warm!

Mansions cannot let the tears in,

Mansions must exclude the storm!

"Many Mansions," by "his Father,"

I don't know him; snugly built!

Could the Children find the way there-

Some, would even trudge tonight!

©Emily Dickinson

"Hope" is the thing with feathers-

That perches in the soul-

And sings the tune without the words-

And never stops-at all-

And sweetest-in the Gale-is heard-

And sore must be the storm-

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm-

I've heard it in the chillest land-

And on the strangest Sea-

Yet, never, in Extremity,

It asked a crumb-of Me.

©Emily Dickinson

"Heaven"-is what I cannot reach!

The Apple on the Tree-

Provided it do hopeless-hang-

That-"Heaven" is-to Me!

The Color, on the Cruising Cloud-

The interdicted Land-

Behind the Hill-the House behind-

There-Paradise-is found!

Her teasing Purples-Afternoons-

The credulous-decoy-

Enamored-of the Conjuror-

That spurned us-Yesterday!

©Emily Dickinson

"Heaven" has different Signs-to me

"Heaven" has different Signs-to me-

Sometimes, I think that Noon

Is but a symbol of the Place-

And when again, at Dawn,

A mighty look runs round the World

And settles in the Hills-

An Awe if it should be like that

Upon the Ignorance steals-

The Orchard, when the Sun is on-

The Triumph of the Birds

When they together Victory make-

Some Carnivals of Clouds-

The Rapture of a finished Day-

Returning to the West-

All these-remind us of the place

That Men call "paradise"-

Itself be fairer-we suppose-

But how Ourself, shall be

Adorned, for a Superior Grace-

Not yet, our eyes can see-

©Emily Dickinson

"Arcturus" is his other name-
I'd rather call him "Star."
It's very mean of Science
To go and interfere!

I slew a worm the other day-
A "Savant" passing by
Murmured "Resurgam"-"Centipede"!
"Oh Lord-how frail are we"!

I pull a flower from the woods-
A monster with a glass
Computes the stamens in a breath-
And has her in a "class"!

Whereas I took the Butterfly
Aforetime in my hat-
He sits erect in "Cabinets"-
The Clover bells forgot.

What once was "Heaven"
Is "Zenith" now-
Where I proposed to go
When Time's brief masquerade was done

Is mapped and charted too.
What if the poles should frisk about
And stand upon their heads!
I hope I'm ready for "the worst"-
Whatever prank betides!

Perhaps the "Kingdom of Heaven's" changed-
I hope the "Children" there Won't be "new fashioned" when I come-
And laugh at me-and stare-

I hope the Father in the skies
Will lift his little girl-
Old fashioned-naught-everything-
Over the stile of "Pearl."

©Emily Dickinson

Circles of blood graced the terrace that led to ogele's river, could this be an Hunter's handiwork, no it couldn't have been, as I remembered that sacred grounds like this, is no hunting ground for the hunters, fear gripped me when I saw pieces of human flesh laced with fresh blood,while the flies danced, buzzling round the pieces, I shook, I could hear my heartbeats, it seems faster.
I should have stayed back with ogechukwu, I sobbed. I hear sounds, seems like footsteps, No it's not, the rustling of the winds stopped, I saw an ikwikwie watching untop the osisi aki bekee tree, it eyes glowed like sun, a bad omen. In a flash I dropped mama's earthenware, it's her favourite,but I couldn't wait to watch as it came crashing down the earth, and to the earth it returned, dashed towards the forest thick, hoping I will take cover in the safety provided by the vegetations bunker, I hid myself against the greens, unsure of what I was hiding from, panting heavily, I wished I could chameleon myself against the greens around me, as a little child, I have watched the Ugwumagana changing colours at will to suit his environment, I wished I was a Ugwumagana , or better still with some esoteric powers that will transform me into a bird, I just wanted to be back home, my introduction is few moons away.
I laid low blending with the vegetations, I watched, my eyes seemed tired,but i could still hear the faint sounds, suddenly I saw some sparkles of light across, I crawled over, walking on my two knees, I moved in its direction, steering my way around the trees, careful not to reveal myself, it seems a foolish idea,i should have just ran, ran as fast as my legs could carry me, only ogechukwu could run faster than I do in the village, but some unknown spirits kept pushing me to this unknown danger, if I die, I die.
With every step I took, the sounds seems clearer,i saw a human figure, bending low, with its head down into... I couldn't see well, seems the plants around him will not let me see him well , I stood up for he seems in a danger, this I thought,so I dashed up moving confidently to him , which proved to be a bad decision,for it became clearer, nothing could be more horrible than this, rooted to my foot, I tried moving, seems mother earth is filled with some magic glue, the cardinals meeting at my head, the more I saw,the less I saw. A man eating figure, he never seemed bother with my uninvited presence, as he continued tearing through the fabrics of his victim's flesh, blood laced the map of his mouth, with different tributaries of blood dripping down his jaws, his canine seems unusual, with some pointed up like an aroused nipple, there in between his dentals, some intestine seems trapped , and it dangled like an headless snake below. I stood rooted, seems my chi is bent on punishing me today,this punishment is far too heavy for me to bear. He continued tearing his way down through the flesh, working his way down,pushing the bones aside, he hungrily devoured, filling his stomach with every bits, an Udele circles nearby, hoping that he would be generous enough to leave some fleshy carcase.
Something moved in me, I noticed my right leg has shifted from its original position, I was about lifting the other when I lifted my head to look at the "man eating man" my heartbeat ceased for seconds, he was looking at me,his eyes shone like that of a cat, his clothes covered in blood, he left his precious meal, he drew nearer, the Udele also perched nearer.
He drew nearer, and my spirit seems to have left my body, a fleshy lump seems standing, I tried to picture his face, but my sight was already failing me, I saw nothing but death approaching me, wearing an oyinbo coat, which is already covered in blood, it's irregular pattern making some odd designs on the fabrics, a crucifix with X inscribed on its meeting point dangled around his neck. He stood before me,watched me like some thousands years artifact which was just unearthed from the rubbles. Danger smelled around him,he watches with a keen eye, seems I fascinate him,i wished the earth will open up its ugly mouth and swallow me, I prayed for death, but not from this horrible being, he moved his hands, and he touched me, his hands upon my shoulder,I shuddered at his touch,as if he wanted to examine his next meal, he moved his hands from my shoulder, placing it on my face, his fingers found rest on the sofa of my face, for he seems pleased with it , moving across my facial templates, I seems helpless, my nostrils drizzled with liquids, it thundered, the Udele flew away hurriedly , I fainted into his open arms and it rained heavily.

I dreamt of him in my dreams, and I knew it's him, he was wearing the same oyinbo coat I saw him wore, just that it's without blood stains. We danced under the sun, and with our hands interlocked together, we ran down the hills together, with wings we flew, riding through the Stormy weathers to the sea, and on its banks, we made love, and the next day I gave birth to a boy, we both named him Onwuatuegwu, so much he looked like his father.
I coughed my way back to life, and found ogechukwu sitting beside the fire in my room keeping tabs on the pot placed on fire, he shouted, Papa! Papa! Ifesinachi has opened her eyes. Papa rushed like a child down into my room, mama I was told had gone down to call a dibia, for I was told, I laid unconscious for three days.
Fully back to life, I was administered to by the dibia upon mama's arrival, upon seeing me regaining consciousness, mama sprawled on the ground not minding her wrapper, and the wet group stained the face of Father Clement, who was patterned on the wrapper, she sang various songs to chukwu thanking Him for my survival. When asked to state recount my ordeals in front of the igwe days later, I simply told them, I was attacked by a wild animal, a soft spot I had developed for this man eating man, reasons I cannot fathom. One thing I was sure of, is my sanity, Ogechukwu knew I lied
My dreams later became our favorite home, for he visited several days after, another baby we gave birth to, another boy, and we both named him, Ozuluonye. Next time we will have a baby girl, this I was sure of...

Written by Amudipe Marcus

Democracy will not come
Today, this year
Nor ever
Through compromise and fear.
I have as much right
As the other fellow has
To stand
On my two feet
And own the land.
I tire so of hearing people say,
Let things take their course.
Tomorrow is another day.
I do not need my freedom when I'm dead.
I cannot live on tomorrow's bread.
Freedom
Is a strong seed
Planted
In a great need.
I live here, too.
I want freedom
Just as you.
by Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?

by Langston Hughes

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.
by Langston Hughes

by Langston Hughes

Row after row with strict impunity
The headstones yield their names to the
element,
The wind whirs without recollection;
In the riven troughs the splayed leaves
Pile up, of nature the casual sacrament
To the seasonal eternity of death;
Then driven by the fierce scrutiny
Of heaven to their election in the vast breath,
They sough the rumour of mortality.
Autumn is desolation in the plot
Of a thousand acres where these memories grow
From the inexhaustible bodies that are not
Dead, but feed the grass row after rich row.
Think of the autumns that have come and gone!
—

Ambitious November with the humors of the
year,
With a particular zeal for every slab,
Staining the uncomfortable angels that rot
On the slabs, a wing chipped here, an arm there:
The brute curiosity of an angel's stare
Turns you, like them, to stone,
Transforms the heaving air
Till plunged to a heavier world below
You shift your sea-space blindly
Heaving, turning like the blind crab.
Dazed by the wind, only the wind
The leaves flying, plunge
You know who have waited by the wall
The twilight certainty of an animal,
Those midnight restitutions of the blood
You know—the immitigable pines, the smoky
frieze
Of the sky, the sudden call: you know the rage,
The cold pool left by the mounting flood,
Of muted Zeno and Parmenides.
You who have waited for the angry resolution
Of those desires that should be yours tomorrow,
You know the unimportant shrift of death
And praise the vision
And praise the arrogant circumstance
Of those who fall
Rank upon rank, hurried beyond decision—
Here by the sagging gate, stopped by the wall.
Seeing, seeing only the leaves
Flying, plunge and expire
Turn your eyes to the immoderate past,
Turn to the inscrutable infantry rising
Demons out of the earth—they will not last.
Stonewall, Stonewall, and the sunken fields of
hemp.
Shiloh, Antietam, Malvern Hill, Bull Run.
Lost in that orient of the thick-and-fast
You will curse the setting sun.
Cursing only the leaves crying
Like an old man in a storm
You hear the shout, the crazy hemlocks point
With troubled fingers to the silence which
Smothers you, a mummy, in time.
The hound bitch
Toothless and dying, in a musty cellar
Hears the wind only.
Now that the salt of their blood
Stiffens the saltier oblivion of the sea,
Seals the malignant purity of the flood,
What shall we who count our days and bow
Our heads with a commemorial woe
In the ribboned coats of grim felicity,
What shall we say of the bones, unclean,
Whose verdurous anonymity will grow?
The ragged arms, the ragged heads and eyes
Lost in these acres of the insane green?
The gray lean spiders come, they come and go;
In a tangle of willows without light
The singular screech-owl's tight
Invisible lyric seeds the mind
With the furious murmur of their chivalry.
We shall say only the leaves
Flying, plunge and expire
We shall say only the leaves whispering
In the improbable mist of nightfall
That flies on multiple wing;
Night is the beginning and the end
And in between the ends of distraction
Waits mute speculation, the patient curse
That stones the eyes, or like the jaguar leaps
For his own image in a jungle pool, his victim.
What shall we say who have knowledge
Carried to the heart? Shall we take the act
To the grave? Shall we, more hopeful, set up the
grave
In the house? The ravenous grave?
Leave now
The shut gate and the decomposing wall:
The gentle serpent, green in the mulberry bush,
Riots with his tongue through the hush—
Sentinel of the grave who counts us all!

Alice grown lazy, mammoth but not fat,
Declines upon her lost and twilight age;
Above in the dozing leaves the grinning cat
Quivers forever with his abstract rage:
Whatever light swayed on the perilous gate
Forever sways, nor will the arching grass,
Caught when the world clattered, undulate
In the deep suspension of the looking-glass.
Bright Alice! always pondering to gloze
The spoiled cruelty she had meant to say
Gazes learnedly down her airy nose
At nothing, nothing thinking all the day.
Turned absent-minded by infinity
She cannot move unless her double move,
The All-Alice of the world's entity
Smashed in the anger of her hopeless love,
Love for herself who, as an earthly twain,
Pouted to join her two in a sweet one;
No more the second lips to kiss in vain
The first she broke, plunged through the glass
alone—
Alone to the weight of impassivity,
Incest of spirit, theorem of desire,
Without will as chalky cliffs by the sea
Empty as the bodiless flesh of fire:
All space, that heaven is a dayless night,
A nightless day driven by perfect lust
For vacancy, in which her bored eyesight
Stares at the drowsy cubes of human dust.
—We too back to the world shall never pass
Through the shattered door, a dumb shade-
harried crowd
Being all infinite, function depth and mass
Without figure, a mathematical shroud
Hurled at the air—blessed without sin!
O God of our flesh, return us to Your wrath,
Let us be evil could we enter in
Your grace, and falter on the stony path!

Quen das finem, rex magne, dolorum?
Where we went in the boat was a long bay
a slingshot wide, walled in by towering stone--
Peaked margin of antiquity's delay,
And we went there out of time's monotone:

Where we went in the black hull no light moved
But a gull white-winged along the feckless wave,
The breeze, unseen but fierce as a body loved,
That boat drove onward like a willing slave:

Where we went in the small ship the seaweed
Parted and gave to us the murmuring shore
And we made feast and in our secret need
Devoured the very plates Aeneas bore:

Where derelict you see through the low twilight
The green coast that you, thunder-tossed, would
win,
Drop sail, and hastening to drink all night
Eat dish and bowl--to take that sweet land in!

Where we feasted and caroused on the sandless
Pebbles, affecting our day of piracy,
What prophecy of eaten plates could landless
Wanderers fulfil by the ancient sea?

We for that time might taste the famous age
Eternal here yet hidden from our eyes
When lust of power undid its stuffless rage;
They, in a wineskin, bore earth's paradise.

Let us lie down once more by the breathing side
Of Ocean, where our live forefathers sleep
As if the Known Sea still were a month wide--
Atlantis howls but is no longer steep!

What country shall we conquer, what fair land
Unman our conquest and locate our blood?
We've cracked the hemispheres with careless
hand!
Now, from the Gates of Hercules we flood

Westward, westward till the barbarous brine
Whelms us to the tired land where tasseling corn,
Fat beans, grapes sweeter than muscadine
Rot on the vine: in that land were we born.

small upper bedroom in the home of Reverend Samuel Parris, Salem, Massachusetts, in the spring of the year 1692. There is a narrow window at the left. Through its leaded panes the morning sunlight streams. A candle still burns near the bed, which is at the right. A chest, a chair, and a small table are the other furnishings. At the back a door opens on the landing of the stairway to the ground floor. The room gives op an air of clean spareness. The roof rafters are exposed, and the wood colors are raw and unmellowed. As the curtain rises, Reverend Parris is discovered kneeling be-side the bed, evidently in prayer. His daughter, Betty Parris, aged ten, is lying on the bed, inert. At the time of these events Parris was in his middle forties. In history he cut a villainous path, and there is very little good to be said for him. He believed he was being persecuted wherever he went, despite his best efforts to win people and God to his side. In meeting, he felt insulted if someone rose to shut the door without first asking his permission. He was a widower with no interest in children, or talent with them. He regarded them as 3.

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Thou hast nor youth nor age
But as it were an after dinner sleep
Dreaming of both.
HERE I am, an old man in a dry month,
Being read to by a boy, waiting for rain.
I was neither at the hot gates
Nor fought in the warm rain
Nor knee deep in the salt marsh, heaving a
cutlass,
5
Bitten by flies, fought.
My house is a decayed house,
And the jew squats on the window sill, the
owner,
Spawned in some estaminet of Antwerp,
Blistered in Brussels, patched and peeled in
London.
10
The goat coughs at night in the field overhead;
Rocks, moss, stonecrop, iron, merds.
The woman keeps the kitchen, makes tea,
Sneezes at evening, poking the peevish gutter.
I an old man,
15
A dull head among windy spaces.
Signs are taken for wonders. “We would see a
sign”:
The word within a word, unable to speak a word,
Swaddled with darkness. In the juvescence of
the year
Came Christ the tiger
20
In depraved May, dogwood and chestnut,
flowering judas,
To be eaten, to be divided, to be drunk
Among whispers; by Mr. Silvero
With caressing hands, at Limoges
Who walked all night in the next room;
25
By Hakagawa, bowing among the Titians;
By Madame de Tornquist, in the dark room
Shifting the candles; Fraulein von Kulp
Who turned in the hall, one hand on the door.
Vacant shuttles
Weave the wind. I have no ghosts,
30
An old man in a draughty house
Under a windy knob.
After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think
now
History has many cunning passages, contrived
corridors
And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,
35
Guides us by vanities. Think now
She gives when our attention is distracted
And what she gives, gives with such supple
confusions
That the giving famishes the craving. Gives too
late
What’s not believed in, or if still believed,
40
In memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too
soon
Into weak hands, what’s thought can be
dispensed with
Till the refusal propagates a fear. Think
Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural
vices
Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues
45
Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.
These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing
tree.
The tiger springs in the new year. Us he devours.
Think at last
We have not reached conclusion, when I
Stiffen in a rented house. Think at last
50
I have not made this show purposelessly
And it is not by any concitation
Of the backward devils
I would meet you upon this honestly.
I that was near your heart was removed
therefrom
55
To lose beauty in terror, terror in inquisition.
I have lost my passion: why should I need to
keep it
Since what is kept must be adulterated?
I have lost my sight, smell, hearing, taste and
touch:
How should I use it for your closer contact?
60
These with a thousand small deliberations
Protract the profit of their chilled delirium,
Excite the membrane, when the sense has
cooled,
With pungent sauces, multiply variety
In a wilderness of mirrors. What will the spider
do,
65
Suspend its operations, will the weevil
Delay? De Bailhache, Fresca, Mrs. Cammel,
whirled
Beyond the circuit of the shuddering Bear
In fractured atoms. Gull against the wind, in the
windy straits
Of Belle Isle, or running on the Horn,
70
White feathers in the snow, the Gulf claims,
And an old man driven by the Trades
To a a sleepy corner.
Tenants of the house,
Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season.

THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD
APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
5
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the
Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the
colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
10
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt
deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the
archduke’s,
My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
15
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the
winter.
What are the roots that clutch, what branches
grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
20
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket
no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
25
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from
either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
30
Frisch weht der Wind
Der Heimat zu,
Mein Irisch Kind,
Wo weilest du?
“You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
35
They called me the hyacinth girl.”
—Yet when we came back, late, from the
Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
40
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Öd’ und leer das Meer.
Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
45
With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
The lady of situations.
50
Here is the man with three staves, and here the
Wheel,
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this
card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his
back,
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
55
I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.
Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,
Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:
One must be so careful these days.
Unreal City,
60
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
65
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying
“Stetson!
You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
70
That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,
Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!
75
You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon
frère!”
II. A GAME OF CHESS
The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Glowed on the marble, where the glass
Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines
From which a golden Cupidon peeped out
80
(Another hid his eyes behind his wing)
Doubled the flames of sevenbranched candelabra
Reflecting light upon the table as
The glitter of her jewels rose to meet it,
From satin cases poured in rich profusion;
85
In vials of ivory and coloured glass
Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic
perfumes,
Unguent, powdered, or liquid—troubled, confused
And drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the
air
That freshened from the window, these
ascended
90
In fattening the prolonged candle-flames,
Flung their smoke into the laquearia,
Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling.
Huge sea-wood fed with copper
Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured
stone,
95
In which sad light a carvèd dolphin swam.
Above the antique mantel was displayed
As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene
The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king
So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale
100
Filled all the desert with inviolable voice
And still she cried, and still the world pursues,
“Jug Jug” to dirty ears.
And other withered stumps of time
Were told upon the walls; staring forms
105
Leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed.
Footsteps shuffled on the stair,
Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair
Spread out in fiery points
Glowed into words, then would be savagely still.
110
“My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with
me.
Speak to me. Why do you never speak? Speak.
What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?
I never know what you are thinking. Think.”
I think we are in rats’ alley
115
Where the dead men lost their bones.
“What is that noise?”
The wind under the door.
“What is that noise now? What is the wind
doing?”
Nothing again nothing.
120
“Do
You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you
remember
Nothing?”
I remember
Those are pearls that were his eyes.
125
“Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your
head?”
But
O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag—
It’s so elegant
So intelligent
130
“What shall I do now? What shall I do?
I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street
With my hair down, so. What shall we do to-
morrow?
What shall we ever do?”
The hot water at ten.
135
And if it rains, a closed car at four.
And we shall play a game of chess,
Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock
upon the door.
When Lil’s husband got demobbed, I said,
I didn’t mince my words, I said to her myself,
140
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
Now Albert’s coming back, make yourself a bit
smart.
He’ll want to know what you done with that
money he gave you
To get yourself some teeth. He did, I was there.
You have them all out, Lil, and get a nice set,
145
He said, I swear, I can’t bear to look at you.
And no more can’t I, I said, and think of poor
Albert,
He’s been in the army four years, he wants a
good time,
And if you don’t give it him, there’s others will, I
said.
Oh is there, she said. Something o’ that, I said.
150
Then I’ll know who to thank, she said, and give
me a straight look.
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
If you don’t like it you can get on with it, I said,
Others can pick and choose if you can’t.
But if Albert makes off, it won’t be for lack of
telling.
155
You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so
antique.
(And her only thirty-one.)
I can’t help it, she said, pulling a long face,
It’s them pills I took, to bring it off, she said.
(She’s had five already, and nearly died of young
George.)
160
The chemist said it would be alright, but I’ve
never been the same.
You are a proper fool, I said.
Well, if Albert won’t leave you alone, there it is, I
said,
What you get married for if you don’t want
children?
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
165
Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had a
hot gammon,
And they asked me in to dinner, to get the
beauty of it hot—
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May.
Goonight.
170
Ta ta. Goonight. Goonight.
Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies,
good night, good night.
III. THE FIRE SERMON
The river’s tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf
Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind
Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs
are departed.
175
Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.
The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich
papers,
Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette
ends
Or other testimony of summer nights. The
nymphs are departed.
And their friends, the loitering heirs of city
directors;
180
Departed, have left no addresses.
By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept…
Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,
Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or
long.
But at my back in a cold blast I hear
185
The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from
ear to ear.
A rat crept softly through the vegetation
Dragging its slimy belly on the bank
While I was fishing in the dull canal
On a winter evening round behind the gashouse.
190
Musing upon the king my brother’s wreck
And on the king my father’s death before him.
White bodies naked on the low damp ground
And bones cast in a little low dry garret,
Rattled by the rat’s foot only, year to year.
195
But at my back from time to time I hear
The sound of horns and motors, which shall
bring
Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring.
O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter
And on her daughter
200
They wash their feet in soda water
Et, O ces voix d’enfants, chantant dans la coupole!
Twit twit twit
Jug jug jug jug jug jug
So rudely forc’d.
205
Tereu
Unreal City
Under the brown fog of a winter noon
Mr Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant
Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants
210
C. i. f. London: documents at sight,
Asked me in demotic French
To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel
Followed by a week-end at the Metropole.
At the violet hour, when the eyes and back
215
Turn upward from the desk, when the human
engine waits
Like a taxi throbbing waiting,
I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two
lives,
Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see
At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives
220
Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,
The typist home at tea-time, clears her
breakfast, lights
Her stove, and lays out food in tins.
Out of the window perilously spread
Her drying combinations touched by the sun’s
last rays,
225
On the divan are piled (at night her bed)
Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.
I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs
Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest—
I too awaited the expected guest.
230
He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,
A small house-agent’s clerk, with one bold stare,
One of the low on whom assurance sits
As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.
The time is now propitious, as he guesses,
235
The meal is ended, she is bored and tired,
Endeavours to engage her in caresses
Which still are unreproved, if undesired.
Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;
Exploring hands encounter no defence;
240
His vanity requires no response,
And makes a welcome of indifference.
(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all
Enacted on this same divan or bed;
I who have sat by Thebes below the wall
245
And walked among the lowest of the dead.)
Bestows one final patronizing kiss,
And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit…
She turns and looks a moment in the glass,
Hardly aware of her departed lover;
250
Her brain allows one half-formed thought to
pass:
“Well now that’s done: and I’m glad it’s over.”
When lovely woman stoops to folly and
Paces about her room again, alone,
She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,
255
And puts a record on the gramophone.
“This music crept by me upon the waters”
And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street.
O City City, I can sometimes hear
Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street,
260
The pleasant whining of a mandoline
And a clatter and a chatter from within
Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls
Of Magnus Martyr hold
Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.
265
The river sweats
Oil and tar
The barges drift
With the turning tide
Red sails
270
Wide
To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.
The barges wash
Drifting logs
Down Greenwich reach
275
Past the Isle of Dogs.
Weialala leia
Wallala leialala
Elizabeth and Leicester
Beating oars
280
The stern was formed
A gilded shell
Red and gold
The brisk swell
Rippled both shores
285
South-west wind
Carried down stream
The peal of bells
White towers
Weialala leia
290
Wallala leialala
“Trams and dusty trees.
Highbury bore me. Richmond and Kew
Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees
Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe.“
295
“My feet are at Moorgate, and my heart
Under my feet. After the event
He wept. He promised ‘a new start.’
I made no comment. What should I resent?”
“On Margate Sands.
300
I can connect
Nothing with nothing.
The broken finger-nails of dirty hands.
My people humble people who expect
Nothing.”
305
la la
To Carthage then I came
Burning burning burning burning
O Lord Thou pluckest me out
O Lord Thou pluckest
310
burning
IV. DEATH BY WATER
Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep seas swell
And the profit and loss.
A current under sea
315
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
320
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and
tall as you.
V. WHAT THE THUNDER SAID
After the torch-light red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
325
Prison and place and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience
330
Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink
335
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
If there were only water amongst the rock
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that
cannot spit
Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit
340
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain
There is not even solitude in the mountains
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
From doors of mud-cracked houses
If there were water
345
And no rock
If there were rock
And also water
And water
A spring
350
A pool among the rock
If there were the sound of water only
Not the cicada
And dry grass singing
But sound of water over a rock
355
Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But there is no water
Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
360
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
—But who is that on the other side of you?
365
What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only
370
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
375
Unreal
A woman drew her long black hair out tight
And fiddled whisper music on those strings
And bats with baby faces in the violet light
Whistled, and beat their wings
380
And crawled head downward down a blackened
wall
And upside down in air were towers
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and
exhausted wells.
In this decayed hole among the mountains
385
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s
home.
It has no windows, and the door swings,
Dry bones can harm no one.
390
Only a cock stood on the roof-tree
Co co rico co co rico
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain
Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
395
Waited for rain, while the black clouds
Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
The jungle crouched, humped in silence.
Then spoke the thunder
DA
400
Datta: what have we given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment’s surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed
405
Which is not to be found in our obituaries
Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
In our empty rooms
DA
410
Dayadhvam: I have heard the key
Turn in the door once and turn once only
We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison
Only at nightfall, aetherial rumours
415
Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus
DA
Damyata: The boat responded
Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar
The sea was calm, your heart would have
responded
420
Gaily, when invited, beating obedient
To controlling hands
I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
Shall I at least set my lands in order?
425
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling
down
Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam ceu chelidon —O swallow swallow
Le Prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie
These fragments I have shored against my ruins
430
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih shantih shantih

Snake
A snake came to my water-trough
On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,
To drink there.

In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great
dark carob-tree
I came down the steps with my pitcher
And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he
was at the trough before
me.

He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall
in the gloom
And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-
bellied down, over the edge of
the stone trough
And rested his throat upon the stone bottom,
i o And where the water had dripped from the
tap, in a small clearness,
He sipped with his straight mouth,
Softly drank through his straight gums, into his
slack long body,
Silently.

Someone was before me at my water-trough,
And I, like a second comer, waiting.

He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,
And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,
And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips,
and mused a moment,
And stooped and drank a little more,
Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning
bowels of the earth
On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.
The voice of my education said to me
He must be killed,
For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent,
the gold are venomous.

And voices in me said, If you were a man
You would take a stick and break him now, and
finish him off.

But must I confess how I liked him,
How glad I was he had come like a guest in
quiet, to drink at my water-trough
And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,
Into the burning bowels of this earth?

Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him? Was
it perversity, that I longed to talk to him? Was it
humility, to feel so honoured?
I felt so honoured.

And yet those voices:
If you were not afraid, you would kill him!

And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid, But
even so, honoured still more
That he should seek my hospitality
From out the dark door of the secret earth.

He drank enough
And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has
drunken,
And flickered his tongue like a forked night on
the air, so black,
Seeming to lick his lips,
And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the
air,
And slowly turned his head,
And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice a dream,
Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round
And climb again the broken bank of my wall-
face.

And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,
And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his
shoulders, and entered farther,
A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his
withdrawing into that horrid black hole,
Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly
drawing himself after,
Overcame me now his back was turned.

I looked round, I put down my pitcher,
I picked up a clumsy log
And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.

I think it did not hit him,
But suddenly that part of him that was left
behind convulsed in undignified haste.
Writhed like lightning, and was gone
Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the
wall-front,
At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with
fascination.

And immediately I regretted it.
I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean
act!
I despised myself and the voices of my accursed
human education.

And I thought of the albatross
And I wished he would come back, my snake.

For he seemed to me again like a king,
Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,
Now due to be crowned again.
And so, I missed my chance with one of the
lords
Of life.
And I have something to expiate:
A pettiness.

Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of
the tingling strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother
who smiles as she sings.
In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song
Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to
belong
To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter
outside
And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano
our guide.
So now it is vain for the singer to burst into
clamour
With the great black piano appassionato. The
glamour
Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast
Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a
child for the past.
1918

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth --
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth --
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.
What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?--
If design govern in a thing so small.
by Robert Frost

All out-of-doors looked darkly in at him
Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars
That gathers on the pane in empty rooms
What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze
Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand
What kept him from remembering what it was
That brought him to that creaking room was age
He stood with barrels round him—at a loss
And having scared the cellar under him
In clomping there, he scared it once again
In clomping off;—and scared the outer night
Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar
Of trees and crack of branches, common things
But nothing so like beating on a box
A light he was to no one but himself
Where now he sat, concerned with he knew what
A quiet light, and then not even that
He consigned to the moon—such as she was
So late-arising—to the broken moon
As better than the sun in any case
For such a charge, his snow upon the roof
His icicles along the wall to keep;
And slept.
The log that shifted with a jolt
Once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted
And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept
One aged man—one man—can't keep a house
A farm, a countryside, or if he can
It's thus he does it of a winter night

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