FOR EZRA POUND
IL MIGLIOR FABBRO
I. The Burial of the Dead
1 April is the cruellest month, breeding
2Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
3Memory and desire, stirring
4Dull roots with spring rain.
5Winter kept us warm, covering
6Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
7A little life with dried tubers.
8Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
9With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
10And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
11And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
12Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
13And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke’s,
14My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,
15And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
16Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
17In the mountains, there you feel free.
18I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.
19 What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
20Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
21You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
22A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
23And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
24And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
25There is shadow under this red rock,
26(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
27And I will show you something different from either
28Your shadow at morning striding behind you
29Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
30I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
31 Frisch weht der Wind
32 Der Heimat zu
33 Mein Irisch Kind,
34 Wo weilest du?
35“You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
36“They called me the hyacinth girl.”
37—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
38Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
39Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
40Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
41Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
42Oed’ und leer das Meer.
43 Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
44Had a bad cold, nevertheless
45Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
46With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
47Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
48(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
49Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
50The lady of situations.
51Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
52And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
53Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
54Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
55The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
56I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.
57Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,
58Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:
59One must be so careful these days.
60 Unreal City,
61Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
62A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
63I had not thought death had undone so many.
64Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
65And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
66Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
67To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
68With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
69There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying: “Stetson!
70“You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
71“That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
72“Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
73“Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
74“Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,
75“Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!
76“You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!”
II. A Game of Chess
77The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,
78Glowed on the marble, where the glass
79Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines
80From which a golden Cupidon peeped out
81(Another hid his eyes behind his wing)
82Doubled the flames of sevenbranched candelabra
83Reflecting light upon the table as
84The glitter of her jewels rose to meet it,
85From satin cases poured in rich profusion;
86In vials of ivory and coloured glass
87Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes,
88Unguent, powdered, or liquid—troubled, confused
89And drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the air
90That freshened from the window, these ascended
91In fattening the prolonged candle-flames,
92Flung their smoke into the laquearia,
93Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling.
94Huge sea-wood fed with copper
95Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone,
96In which sad light a carvéd dolphin swam.
97Above the antique mantel was displayed
98As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene
99The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king
100So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale
101Filled all the desert with inviolable voice
102And still she cried, and still the world pursues,
103“Jug Jug” to dirty ears.
104And other withered stumps of time
105Were told upon the walls; staring forms
106Leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed.
107Footsteps shuffled on the stair.
108Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair
109Spread out in fiery points
110Glowed into words, then would be savagely still.
111 “My nerves are bad tonight. Yes, bad. Stay with me.
112“Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak.
113 “What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?
114“I never know what you are thinking. Think.”
115 I think we are in rats’ alley
116Where the dead men lost their bones.
117 “What is that noise?”
118 The wind under the door.
119“What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?”
120 Nothing again nothing.
121 “Do
122“You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember
123“Nothing?”
124 I remember
125Those are pearls that were his eyes.
126“Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?”
127 But
128O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag—
129It’s so elegant
130So intelligent
131“What shall I do now? What shall I do?”
132“I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street
133“With my hair down, so. What shall we do tomorrow?
134“What shall we ever do?”
135 The hot water at ten.
136And if it rains, a closed car at four.
137And we shall play a game of chess,
138Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.
139 When Lil’s husband got demobbed, I said—
140I didn’t mince my words, I said to her myself,
141HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME
142Now Albert’s coming back, make yourself a bit smart.
143He’ll want to know what you done with that money he gave you
144To get yourself some teeth. He did, I was there.
145You have them all out, Lil, and get a nice set,
146He said, I swear, I can’t bear to look at you.
147And no more can’t I, I said, and think of poor Albert,
148He’s been in the army four years, he wants a good time,
149And if you don’t give it him, there’s others will, I said.
150Oh is there, she said. Something o’ that, I said.
151Then I’ll know who to thank, she said, and give me a straight look.
152HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME
153If you don’t like it you can get on with it, I said.
154Others can pick and choose if you can’t.
155But if Albert makes off, it won’t be for lack of telling.
156You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique.
157(And her only thirty-one.)
158I can’t help it, she said, pulling a long face,
159It’s them pills I took, to bring it off, she said.
160(She’s had five already, and nearly died of young George.)
161The chemist said it would be all right, but I’ve never been the same.
162You are a proper fool, I said.
163Well, if Albert won’t leave you alone, there it is, I said,
164What you get married for if you don’t want children?
165HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME
166Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had a hot gammon,
167And they asked me in to dinner, to get the beauty of it hot—
168HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME
169HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME
170Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May. Goonight.
171Ta ta. Goonight. Goonight.
172Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.
III. The Fire Sermon
173 The river’s tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf
174Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind
175Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.
176Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.
177The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,
178Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends
179Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed.
180And their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors;
181Departed, have left no addresses.
182By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept . . .
183Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,
184Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.
185But at my back in a cold blast I hear
186The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.
187A rat crept softly through the vegetation
188Dragging its slimy belly on the bank
189While I was fishing in the dull canal
190On a winter evening round behind the gashouse
191Musing upon the king my brother’s wreck
192And on the king my father’s death before him.
193White bodies naked on the low damp ground
194And bones cast in a little low dry garret,
195Rattled by the rat’s foot only, year to year.
196But at my back from time to time I hear
197The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring
198Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring.
199O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter
200And on her daughter
201They wash their feet in soda water
202Et O ces voix d’enfants, chantant dans la coupole!
203Twit twit twit
204Jug jug jug jug jug jug
205So rudely forc’d.
206Tereu
207Unreal City
208Under the brown fog of a winter noon
209Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant
210Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants
211C.i.f. London: documents at sight,
212Asked me in demotic French
213To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel
214Followed by a weekend at the Metropole.
215At the violet hour, when the eyes and back
216Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits
217Like a taxi throbbing waiting,
218I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
219Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see
220At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives
221Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,
222The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights
223Her stove, and lays out food in tins.
224Out of the window perilously spread
225Her drying combinations touched by the sun’s last rays,
226On the divan are piled (at night her bed)
227Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.
228I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs
229Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest—
230I too awaited the expected guest.
231He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,
232A small house agent’s clerk, with one bold stare,
233One of the low on whom assurance sits
234As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.
235The time is now propitious, as he guesses,
236The meal is ended, she is bored and tired,
237Endeavours to engage her in caresses
238Which still are unreproved, if undesired.
239Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;
240Exploring hands encounter no defence;
241His vanity requires no response,
242And makes a welcome of indifference.
243(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all
244Enacted on this same divan or bed;
245I who have sat by Thebes below the wall
246And walked among the lowest of the dead.)
247Bestows one final patronising kiss,
248And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit . . .
249She turns and looks a moment in the glass,
250Hardly aware of her departed lover;
251Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:
252“Well now that’s done: and I’m glad it’s over.”
253When lovely woman stoops to folly and
254Paces about her room again, alone,
255She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,
256And puts a record on the gramophone.
257“This music crept by me upon the waters”
258And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street.
259O City city, I can sometimes hear
260Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street,
261The pleasant whining of a mandoline
262And a clatter and a chatter from within
263Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls
264Of Magnus Martyr hold
265Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.
266 The river sweats
267 Oil and tar
268 The barges drift
269 With the turning tide
270 Red sails
271 Wide
272 To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.
273 The barges wash
274 Drifting logs
275 Down Greenwich reach
276 Past the Isle of Dogs.
277 Weialala leia
278 Wallala leialala
279 Elizabeth and Leicester
280 Beating oars
281 The stern was formed
282 A gilded shell
283 Red and gold
284 The brisk swell
285 Rippled both shores
286 Southwest wind
287 Carried down stream
288 The peal of bells
289 White towers
290 Weialala leia
291 Wallala leialala
292“Trams and dusty trees.
293Highbury bore me. Richmond and Kew
294Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees
295Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe.”
296“My feet are at Moorgate, and my heart
297Under my feet. After the event
298He wept. He promised a ‘new start.’
299I made no comment. What should I resent?”
300“On Margate Sands.
301I can connect
302Nothing with nothing.
303The broken fingernails of dirty hands.
304My people humble people who expect
305Nothing.”
306 la la
307To Carthage then I came
308Burning burning burning burning
309O Lord Thou pluckest me out
310O Lord Thou pluckest
311burning
IV. Death by Water
312Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
313Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
314And the profit and loss.
315 A current under sea
316Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
317He passed the stages of his age and youth
318Entering the whirlpool.
319 Gentile or Jew
320O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
321Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.
V. What the Thunder Said
322 After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
323After the frosty silence in the gardens
324After the agony in stony places
325The shouting and the crying
326Prison and palace and reverberation
327Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
328He who was living is now dead
329We who were living are now dying
330With a little patience
331Here is no water but only rock
332Rock and no water and the sandy road
333The road winding above among the mountains
334Which are mountains of rock without water
335If there were water we should stop and drink
336Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
337Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
338If there were only water amongst the rock
339Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
340Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit
341There is not even silence in the mountains
342But dry sterile thunder without rain
343There is not even solitude in the mountains
344But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
345From doors of mudcracked houses
346 If there were water
347 And no rock
348 If there were rock
349 And also water
350 And water
351 A spring
352 A pool among the rock
353 If there were the sound of water only
354 Not the cicada
355 And dry grass singing
356 But sound of water over a rock
357 Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
358 Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
359 But there is no water
360Who is the third who walks always beside you?
361When I count, there are only you and I together
362But when I look ahead up the white road
363There is always another one walking beside you
364Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
365I do not know whether a man or a woman
366—But who is that on the other side of you?
367What is that sound high in the air
368Murmur of maternal lamentation
369Who are those hooded hordes swarming
370Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
371Ringed by the flat horizon only
372What is the city over the mountains
373Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
374Falling towers
375Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
376Vienna London
377Unreal
378A woman drew her long black hair out tight
379And fiddled whisper music on those strings
380And bats with baby faces in the violet light
381Whistled, and beat their wings
382And crawled head downward down a blackened wall
383And upside down in air were towers
384Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
385And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.
386In this decayed hole among the mountains
387In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
388Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
389There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s home.
390It has no windows, and the door swings,
391Dry bones can harm no one.
392Only a cock stood on the rooftree
393Co co rico co co rico
394In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
395Bringing rain
396Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
397Waited for rain, while the black clouds
398Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
399The jungle crouched, humped in silence.
400Then spoke the thunder
401DA
402Datta: what have we given?
403My friend, blood shaking my heart
404The awful daring of a moment’s surrender
405Which an age of prudence can never retract
406By this, and this only, we have existed
407Which is not to be found in our obituaries
408Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
409Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
410In our empty rooms
411DA
412Dayadhvam: I have heard the key
413Turn in the door once and turn once only
414We think of the key, each in his prison
415Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison
416Only at nightfall, aethereal rumours
417Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus
418DA
419Damyata: The boat responded
420Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar
421The sea was calm, your heart would have responded
422Gaily, when invited, beating obedient
423To controlling hands
424 I sat upon the shore
425Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
426Shall I at least set my lands in order?
427London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down
428Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina
429Quando fiam uti chelidon—O swallow swallow
430Le Prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie
431These fragments I have shored against my ruins
432Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.
433Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
434 Shantih shantih shantih
FOR EZRA POUND
IL MIGLIOR FABBRO
I. The Burial of the Dead
1 April is the cruellest month, breeding
2Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
3Memory and desire, stirring
4Dull roots with spring rain.
5Winter kept us warm, covering
6Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
7A little life with dried tubers.
8Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
9With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
10And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
11And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
12Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
13And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke’s,
14My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,
15And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
16Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
17In the mountains, there you feel free.
18I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.
19 What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
20Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
21You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
22A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
23And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
24And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
25There is shadow under this red rock,
26(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
27And I will show you something different from either
28Your shadow at morning striding behind you
29Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
30I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
31 Frisch weht der Wind
32 Der Heimat zu
33 Mein Irisch Kind,
34 Wo weilest du?
35“You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
36“They called me the hyacinth girl.”
37—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
38Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
39Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
40Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
41Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
42Oed’ und leer das Meer.
43 Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
44Had a bad cold, nevertheless
45Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
46With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
47Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
48(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
49Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
50The lady of situations.
51Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
52And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
53Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
54Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
55The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
56I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.
57Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,
58Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:
59One must be so careful these days.
60 Unreal City,
61Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
62A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
63I had not thought death had undone so many.
64Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
65And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
66Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
67To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
68With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
69There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying: “Stetson!
70“You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
71“That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
72“Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
73“Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
74“Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,
75“Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!
76“You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!”
II. A Game of Chess
77The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,
78Glowed on the marble, where the glass
79Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines
80From which a golden Cupidon peeped out
81(Another hid his eyes behind his wing)
82Doubled the flames of sevenbranched candelabra
83Reflecting light upon the table as
84The glitter of her jewels rose to meet it,
85From satin cases poured in rich profusion;
86In vials of ivory and coloured glass
87Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes,
88Unguent, powdered, or liquid—troubled, confused
89And drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the air
90That freshened from the window, these ascended
91In fattening the prolonged candle-flames,
92Flung their smoke into the laquearia,
93Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling.
94Huge sea-wood fed with copper
95Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone,
96In which sad light a carvéd dolphin swam.
97Above the antique mantel was displayed
98As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene
99The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king
100So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale
101Filled all the desert with inviolable voice
102And still she cried, and still the world pursues,
103“Jug Jug” to dirty ears.
104And other withered stumps of time
105Were told upon the walls; staring forms
106Leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed.
107Footsteps shuffled on the stair.
108Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair
109Spread out in fiery points
110Glowed into words, then would be savagely still.
111 “My nerves are bad tonight. Yes, bad. Stay with me.
112“Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak.
113 “What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?
114“I never know what you are thinking. Think.”
115 I think we are in rats’ alley
116Where the dead men lost their bones.
117 “What is that noise?”
118 The wind under the door.
119“What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?”
120 Nothing again nothing.
121 “Do
122“You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember
123“Nothing?”
124 I remember
125Those are pearls that were his eyes.
126“Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?”
127 But
128O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag—
129It’s so elegant
130So intelligent
131“What shall I do now? What shall I do?”
132“I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street
133“With my hair down, so. What shall we do tomorrow?
134“What shall we ever do?”
135 The hot water at ten.
136And if it rains, a closed car at four.
137And we shall play a game of chess,
138Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.
139 When Lil’s husband got demobbed, I said—
140I didn’t mince my words, I said to her myself,
141HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME
142Now Albert’s coming back, make yourself a bit smart.
143He’ll want to know what you done with that money he gave you
144To get yourself some teeth. He did, I was there.
145You have them all out, Lil, and get a nice set,
146He said, I swear, I can’t bear to look at you.
147And no more can’t I, I said, and think of poor Albert,
148He’s been in the army four years, he wants a good time,
149And if you don’t give it him, there’s others will, I said.
150Oh is there, she said. Something o’ that, I said.
151Then I’ll know who to thank, she said, and give me a straight look.
152HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME
153If you don’t like it you can get on with it, I said.
154Others can pick and choose if you can’t.
155But if Albert makes off, it won’t be for lack of telling.
156You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique.
157(And her only thirty-one.)
158I can’t help it, she said, pulling a long face,
159It’s them pills I took, to bring it off, she said.
160(She’s had five already, and nearly died of young George.)
161The chemist said it would be all right, but I’ve never been the same.
162You are a proper fool, I said.
163Well, if Albert won’t leave you alone, there it is, I said,
164What you get married for if you don’t want children?
165HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME
166Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had a hot gammon,
167And they asked me in to dinner, to get the beauty of it hot—
168HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME
169HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME
170Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May. Goonight.
171Ta ta. Goonight. Goonight.
172Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.
III. The Fire Sermon
173 The river’s tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf
174Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind
175Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.
176Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.
177The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,
178Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends
179Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed.
180And their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors;
181Departed, have left no addresses.
182By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept . . .
183Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,
184Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.
185But at my back in a cold blast I hear
186The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.
187A rat crept softly through the vegetation
188Dragging its slimy belly on the bank
189While I was fishing in the dull canal
190On a winter evening round behind the gashouse
191Musing upon the king my brother’s wreck
192And on the king my father’s death before him.
193White bodies naked on the low damp ground
194And bones cast in a little low dry garret,
195Rattled by the rat’s foot only, year to year.
196But at my back from time to time I hear
197The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring
198Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring.
199O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter
200And on her daughter
201They wash their feet in soda water
202Et O ces voix d’enfants, chantant dans la coupole!
203Twit twit twit
204Jug jug jug jug jug jug
205So rudely forc’d.
206Tereu
207Unreal City
208Under the brown fog of a winter noon
209Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant
210Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants
211C.i.f. London: documents at sight,
212Asked me in demotic French
213To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel
214Followed by a weekend at the Metropole.
215At the violet hour, when the eyes and back
216Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits
217Like a taxi throbbing waiting,
218I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
219Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see
220At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives
221Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,
222The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights
223Her stove, and lays out food in tins.
224Out of the window perilously spread
225Her drying combinations touched by the sun’s last rays,
226On the divan are piled (at night her bed)
227Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.
228I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs
229Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest—
230I too awaited the expected guest.
231He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,
232A small house agent’s clerk, with one bold stare,
233One of the low on whom assurance sits
234As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.
235The time is now propitious, as he guesses,
236The meal is ended, she is bored and tired,
237Endeavours to engage her in caresses
238Which still are unreproved, if undesired.
239Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;
240Exploring hands encounter no defence;
241His vanity requires no response,
242And makes a welcome of indifference.
243(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all
244Enacted on this same divan or bed;
245I who have sat by Thebes below the wall
246And walked among the lowest of the dead.)
247Bestows one final patronising kiss,
248And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit . . .
249She turns and looks a moment in the glass,
250Hardly aware of her departed lover;
251Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:
252“Well now that’s done: and I’m glad it’s over.”
253When lovely woman stoops to folly and
254Paces about her room again, alone,
255She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,
256And puts a record on the gramophone.
257“This music crept by me upon the waters”
258And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street.
259O City city, I can sometimes hear
260Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street,
261The pleasant whining of a mandoline
262And a clatter and a chatter from within
263Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls
264Of Magnus Martyr hold
265Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.
266 The river sweats
267 Oil and tar
268 The barges drift
269 With the turning tide
270 Red sails
271 Wide
272 To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.
273 The barges wash
274 Drifting logs
275 Down Greenwich reach
276 Past the Isle of Dogs.
277 Weialala leia
278 Wallala leialala
279 Elizabeth and Leicester
280 Beating oars
281 The stern was formed
282 A gilded shell
283 Red and gold
284 The brisk swell
285 Rippled both shores
286 Southwest wind
287 Carried down stream
288 The peal of bells
289 White towers
290 Weialala leia
291 Wallala leialala
292“Trams and dusty trees.
293Highbury bore me. Richmond and Kew
294Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees
295Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe.”
296“My feet are at Moorgate, and my heart
297Under my feet. After the event
298He wept. He promised a ‘new start.’
299I made no comment. What should I resent?”
300“On Margate Sands.
301I can connect
302Nothing with nothing.
303The broken fingernails of dirty hands.
304My people humble people who expect
305Nothing.”
306 la la
307To Carthage then I came
308Burning burning burning burning
309O Lord Thou pluckest me out
310O Lord Thou pluckest
311burning
IV. Death by Water
312Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
313Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
314And the profit and loss.
315 A current under sea
316Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
317He passed the stages of his age and youth
318Entering the whirlpool.
319 Gentile or Jew
320O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
321Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.
V. What the Thunder Said
322 After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
323After the frosty silence in the gardens
324After the agony in stony places
325The shouting and the crying
326Prison and palace and reverberation
327Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
328He who was living is now dead
329We who were living are now dying
330With a little patience
331Here is no water but only rock
332Rock and no water and the sandy road
333The road winding above among the mountains
334Which are mountains of rock without water
335If there were water we should stop and drink
336Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
337Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
338If there were only water amongst the rock
339Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
340Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit
341There is not even silence in the mountains
342But dry sterile thunder without rain
343There is not even solitude in the mountains
344But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
345From doors of mudcracked houses
346 If there were water
347 And no rock
348 If there were rock
349 And also water
350 And water
351 A spring
352 A pool among the rock
353 If there were the sound of water only
354 Not the cicada
355 And dry grass singing
356 But sound of water over a rock
357 Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
358 Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
359 But there is no water
360Who is the third who walks always beside you?
361When I count, there are only you and I together
362But when I look ahead up the white road
363There is always another one walking beside you
364Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
365I do not know whether a man or a woman
366—But who is that on the other side of you?
367What is that sound high in the air
368Murmur of maternal lamentation
369Who are those hooded hordes swarming
370Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
371Ringed by the flat horizon only
372What is the city over the mountains
373Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
374Falling towers
375Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
376Vienna London
377Unreal
378A woman drew her long black hair out tight
379And fiddled whisper music on those strings
380And bats with baby faces in the violet light
381Whistled, and beat their wings
382And crawled head downward down a blackened wall
383And upside down in air were towers
384Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
385And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.
386In this decayed hole among the mountains
387In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
388Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
389There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s home.
390It has no windows, and the door swings,
391Dry bones can harm no one.
392Only a cock stood on the rooftree
393Co co rico co co rico
394In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
395Bringing rain
396Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
397Waited for rain, while the black clouds
398Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
399The jungle crouched, humped in silence.
400Then spoke the thunder
401DA
402Datta: what have we given?
403My friend, blood shaking my heart
404The awful daring of a moment’s surrender
405Which an age of prudence can never retract
406By this, and this only, we have existed
407Which is not to be found in our obituaries
408Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
409Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
410In our empty rooms
411DA
412Dayadhvam: I have heard the key
413Turn in the door once and turn once only
414We think of the key, each in his prison
415Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison
416Only at nightfall, aethereal rumours
417Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus
418DA
419Damyata: The boat responded
420Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar
421The sea was calm, your heart would have responded
422Gaily, when invited, beating obedient
423To controlling hands
424 I sat upon the shore
425Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
426Shall I at least set my lands in order?
427London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down
428Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina
429Quando fiam uti chelidon—O swallow swallow
430Le Prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie
431These fragments I have shored against my ruins
432Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.
433Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
434 Shantih shantih shantih
FOR EZRA POUND
IL MIGLIOR FABBRO
I. 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
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,
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 arch-duke’s,
My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
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,
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,
(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.
Frisch weht der Wind
Der Heimat zu
Mein Irisch Kind,
Wo weilest du?
“You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
“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,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Oed’ und leer das Meer
.
Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
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.
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.
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,
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.
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!
“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!
“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
(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;
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
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,
In which sad light a carvéd 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
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;
And other withered stumps of time
Were told upon the walls; staring forms
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.
“My nerves are bad tonight. 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
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.
“Do
“You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember
“Nothing?”
I remember
Those are pearls that were his eyes.
“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
“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 tomorrow?
“What shall we ever do?”
The hot water at ten.
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,
HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S 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,
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.
Then I’ll know who to thank, she said, and give me a straight look.
HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S 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.
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.)
The chemist said it would be all right, 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 IT'S TIME
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 IT'S TIME
HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME
Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May. Goonight.
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.
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;
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
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
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.
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
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.
Tereu
Unreal City
Under the brown fog of a winter noon
Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant
Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants
C.i.f. London: documents at sight,
Asked me in demotic French
To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel
Followed by a weekend at the Metropole.
At the violet hour, when the eyes and back
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
Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,
The typist home at teatime, 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,
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.
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,
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;
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
And walked among the lowest of the dead.)
Bestows one final patronising kiss,
And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit . . .
She turns and looks a moment in the glass,
Hardly aware of her departed lover;
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,
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,
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.
The river sweats
Oil and tar
The barges drift
With the turning tide
Red sails
Wide
To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.
The barges wash
Drifting logs
Down Greenwich reach
Past the Isle of Dogs.
Weialala leia
Wallala leialala
Elizabeth and Leicester
Beating oars
The stern was formed
A gilded shell
Red and gold
The brisk swell
Rippled both shores
Southwest wind
Carried down stream
The peal of bells
White towers
Weialala leia
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.”
“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.
I can connect
Nothing with nothing.
The broken fingernails of dirty hands.
My people humble people who expect
Nothing.”
la la
To Carthage then I came
Burning burning burning burning
O Lord Thou pluckest me out
O Lord Thou pluckest
burning
IV. Death by Water
Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss.
A current under sea
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,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.
V. What the Thunder Said
After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and palace 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
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
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
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 mudcracked houses
If there were water
And no rock
If there were rock
And also water
And water
A spring
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
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
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?
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
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
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
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
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.
Only a cock stood on the rooftree
Co co rico co co rico
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain
Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
Waited for rain, while the black clouds
Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
The jungle crouched, humped in silence.
Then spoke the thunder
DA
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
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
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, aethereal rumours
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
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?
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down
Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam uti chelidon
—O swallow swallow
Le Prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie
These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih shantih shantih
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