Great storms
are not the final storms
no more than sweet calms
are the ever after;
any more my faith turns
toward eternity,
trying so hard to see
around the bend.
Earth, sun, river and wind...
I’m looking for the quintessential
Truth, something woven in
To every calm and storm.
This time
won’t be the only time,
neither the first rhyme
nor the closing chapter,
more and more I move to
the perpetuity
of things that never change
and never end.
Rock, fire, spirit and flow...
The more I move the less I know, but
Truth, where I want to go,
Is with me all the time.
I AM
as certain as the journey journeys on,
each setting sun returns to where it rose,
each river flows into a timeless sea
and endlessly the wind replenishes.
I AM
as certain as the ground I stand upon
a fire within me burns eternally
and living water pulses through my veins
and hope, the spirit in my soul, remains.
This storm
may be a passing storm,
but let the rains come
and let me feel the thunder
and let its music be
part of the symphony
of where I’m going to
and where I’ve been.
Earth, sun, river and wind...
Rock, fire, spirit and flow...
I’m looking for the quintessential
Truth: it's where I want to go.
Wednesday, June 22
Tuesday, June 21
End Of Spring
The end of spring’s beginning never fails
to bode a mournful middle, even as
the grass seems greener than it ever has
been, flowers are in fullest bloom and sails
are carrying the winds of summer across
the bay: it always takes me by surprise
to finish rubbing winter from my eyes
and rudely find the unexpected loss
of innocence that comes and goes too soon.
My spring has sprung and all the birds have flown
away. My spring has sprung and all that was
awakening begins to settle down,
and even as the warmer dawns of June
exhilarate, I hesitate, because,
as morning dews of May dry with the sun,
my innocence, by the toll of noon, is gone.
Now middle age begins, yet I feel young
and ready as I ever will be to
leave spring behind and shake away the dew
that never satisfied me. Spring, if sprung,
be damned: the summer’s beckoning me now
and I’ve got vernal promises to break
and miles to go before I let sleep take
me; that will be a cold night anyhow
when the ghosts of innocence steal me away.
My spring has sprung; all memories of birth-
days celebrated have blown out their fires.
June’s been stuck on the wall for months and months,
mocking the paper trails of time and youth.
I’m never home; it’s not home anymore;
I’ve gone away for summer, for all it’s worth,
forgetting spring, refraining innocence.
to bode a mournful middle, even as
the grass seems greener than it ever has
been, flowers are in fullest bloom and sails
are carrying the winds of summer across
the bay: it always takes me by surprise
to finish rubbing winter from my eyes
and rudely find the unexpected loss
of innocence that comes and goes too soon.
My spring has sprung and all the birds have flown
away. My spring has sprung and all that was
awakening begins to settle down,
and even as the warmer dawns of June
exhilarate, I hesitate, because,
as morning dews of May dry with the sun,
my innocence, by the toll of noon, is gone.
Now middle age begins, yet I feel young
and ready as I ever will be to
leave spring behind and shake away the dew
that never satisfied me. Spring, if sprung,
be damned: the summer’s beckoning me now
and I’ve got vernal promises to break
and miles to go before I let sleep take
me; that will be a cold night anyhow
when the ghosts of innocence steal me away.
My spring has sprung; all memories of birth-
days celebrated have blown out their fires.
June’s been stuck on the wall for months and months,
mocking the paper trails of time and youth.
I’m never home; it’s not home anymore;
I’ve gone away for summer, for all it’s worth,
forgetting spring, refraining innocence.
Monday, June 20
Parulogy
Rows, half empty, of wishers well followed me with emotional eyes
and held their breath, all as one, waiting for a verdict, wanting to know.
I took my position, for a moment missing the security of invisibility,
where once I had been sitting, then for the next brief believing
I needed, though there was none, a podium to hide behind. But one
continues, as I suppose one must, and in this frame I cleared my throat
and started, cued by the piano of my heart and an andante pace of mind,
to sing:
She never knew how to whisper...
And hearing myself now, too, neither did I.
Without giving herself away,
or how to make people listen
when she had something to say
She never kept any mysteries
that might have made me stay
and draw close to her.
We grew apart until I barely knew her.
I want so much to whisper this, to make them strain to understand
and hear beyond pity. Listen. Pause... (listen)...
She never left an impression
in a confidential tone
or tendered any emotions
that were meant for one alone.
We never had conversations
where she let me be the only
one to hear her,
but here I was, the person standing near her.
As I was today, though all these stony faces would contest.
No I do not whisper, and though your eyes mutter back
with hard cast sentiment, a numbness prevails in mine,
from all those stand-by years...
I used to love the way she wore
her passions on her sleeve
and how she spoke her mind
and bared her soul,
but lately I’ve been missing
what was never there to see
and waiting for her secrets to be told.
Look at me, and how I’ve held myself thus far, pretending my tears
and shedding my pain. But look at her, lying there: this is about her, not me.
She never knew how to whisper...
...and I stop now, for a maybe moment, as at the beginning,
longing again for the security of cover. I want so much
to scream elaboration, a poem to remember if not words
to understand. But in the end, and so on, I’d just like them to listen.
I never thought I would miss her
unreserved verbosity
or how she held her position
with such acrimony. She
was never able to whisper
but she freely showed her feelings
if you let her.
But I let her leave, and still I can’t forget her.
and held their breath, all as one, waiting for a verdict, wanting to know.
I took my position, for a moment missing the security of invisibility,
where once I had been sitting, then for the next brief believing
I needed, though there was none, a podium to hide behind. But one
continues, as I suppose one must, and in this frame I cleared my throat
and started, cued by the piano of my heart and an andante pace of mind,
to sing:
She never knew how to whisper...
And hearing myself now, too, neither did I.
Without giving herself away,
or how to make people listen
when she had something to say
She never kept any mysteries
that might have made me stay
and draw close to her.
We grew apart until I barely knew her.
I want so much to whisper this, to make them strain to understand
and hear beyond pity. Listen. Pause... (listen)...
She never left an impression
in a confidential tone
or tendered any emotions
that were meant for one alone.
We never had conversations
where she let me be the only
one to hear her,
but here I was, the person standing near her.
As I was today, though all these stony faces would contest.
No I do not whisper, and though your eyes mutter back
with hard cast sentiment, a numbness prevails in mine,
from all those stand-by years...
I used to love the way she wore
her passions on her sleeve
and how she spoke her mind
and bared her soul,
but lately I’ve been missing
what was never there to see
and waiting for her secrets to be told.
Look at me, and how I’ve held myself thus far, pretending my tears
and shedding my pain. But look at her, lying there: this is about her, not me.
She never knew how to whisper...
...and I stop now, for a maybe moment, as at the beginning,
longing again for the security of cover. I want so much
to scream elaboration, a poem to remember if not words
to understand. But in the end, and so on, I’d just like them to listen.
I never thought I would miss her
unreserved verbosity
or how she held her position
with such acrimony. She
was never able to whisper
but she freely showed her feelings
if you let her.
But I let her leave, and still I can’t forget her.
Sunday, June 19
Chasing Wind
The walls shake with anger.
The wind wakes the dead, stirs
the sleeping, makes it difficult to dream.
The world’s moment blows against
This house: letting be known
What is so frequently forgotten:
We stand at the whim of nature
And we breathe as the wind allows.
The wind wakes the dead, stirs
the sleeping, makes it difficult to dream.
The world’s moment blows against
This house: letting be known
What is so frequently forgotten:
We stand at the whim of nature
And we breathe as the wind allows.
Saturday, June 18
gray
if you could read my mind it would be gray
i mean to say
the color of a stone
without distinction neither right no wrong
without apology no will no wont
be coming home tonight
how was your day
you said i said its funny but i dont
remember much about the black or white
of it the colors turn to monotone
and the lines begin to fade
away
i find myself with nothing more to say
and nowhere else to go the day
is done
and i am going home to you tonight
instead of going off somewhere alone
to lose myself in my private shades
of gray
i mean to say
the color of a stone
without distinction neither right no wrong
without apology no will no wont
be coming home tonight
how was your day
you said i said its funny but i dont
remember much about the black or white
of it the colors turn to monotone
and the lines begin to fade
away
i find myself with nothing more to say
and nowhere else to go the day
is done
and i am going home to you tonight
instead of going off somewhere alone
to lose myself in my private shades
of gray
Friday, June 17
TWL, Lines 139-172 : Lil And Albert And The Pub Farewells
139 When Lil's husband got demobbed, I said —
140 I didn't mince my words, I said to her myself,
141 Hurry up please its time
142 Now Albert's coming back, make yourself a bit smart.
143 He'll want to know what you done with that money he
gave you
144 To get herself some teeth. He did, I was there.
145 You have them all out, Lil, and get a nice set,
146 He said, I swear, I can't bear to look at you.
147 And no more can't I, I said, and think of poor Albert,
148 He's been in the army for four years, he wants a good time,
149 And if you don't give it him, there's others will, I said.
150 Oh is there, she said. Something o' that, I said.
151 Then I'll know who to thank, she said, and give me a
straight look.
152 Hurry up please its time
153 If you don't like it you can get on with it, I said.
154 Others can pick and choose if you can't.
155 But if Albert makes off, it won't be for a lack of telling.
156 You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique.
157 (And her only thirty-one.)
158 I can't help it, she said, pulling a long face,
159 It's them pills I took, to bring it off, she said.
160 (She's had five already, and nearly died of young George.)
161 The chemist said it would be all right, but I've never been
the same.
162 You are a proper fool, I said.
163 Well, if Albert won't leave you alone, there it is, I said,
164 What you get married for if you don't want children?
165 Hurry up please its time
166 Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had a hot
gammon,
167 And they asked me in to dinner, to get the beauty of it
hot—
168 Hurry up please its time
169 Hurry up please its time
170 Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May. Goonight.
171 Ta ta. Goonight. Goonight.
172 Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night,
good night.
139. THE MAID’S STORY: See Eliot, F&T: This story was said to be related to the Eliots by their maid at the end of the war. To be demobbed, or demobilized, is to be discharged from military service.
141. TIME’S WINGED CHARIOT: “Hurry up please its time” reflects a common last call in English pubs. See also the witches before their boiling cauldron in Shakespeare, Macbeth 4.1.3:
“Harpier, cries:—‘’Tis time, ‘tis time.”
The cauldron over the fire is later alluded to at lines 307 and 308. The present “time” line repeats at lines 141, 152, 165, 168 and 169; this also follows the five counterpart repetitions of a less frantic mantra in Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock:
“There will be time.”
Compare the bartender’s reminders, and the concurrent advice being given to Lil, to the urgent “carpe diem” call of Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress (1681):
“Had we but world enough and time”
The mistress’s lover begins to wish they had time but quickly concludes that they don’t. See Eliot, Andrew Marvel (Times Literary Supplement, 03/31/1921), finding in Marvel’s Coy Mistress:
“an alliance of wit and seriousness (by which the seriousness is intensified).”
Coy Mistress allusions also appear at lines 185, 196 and 235. See especially note 197, for a modern variation to these lines:
“But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near.”
For some counterpace to Coy, compare the similar pub setting of line 260 and the poet’s unexpected appreciation for the music sometimes heard “beside a public bar.”
THE SEASONAL CYCLE: In response to the mistress’s master, and to the bartender, the wicked sisters of Macbeth, Lil’s advisor and Mr. Prufrock, see Ecclesiastes 3:1-8:
“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.”
The seasonal cycle of Ecclesiastes is central to many of Eliot’s allusions. See note 0.2 for the many references to renewal and note 0.3 for the consideration of ephemerality. For more specific references to the seasons, see notes 1 (Chaucer’s spring), 71 (the season of sowing and sprouting) 185 (the rattling bones of winter), 219 (the dry season of Gerontion), 253 (an unseasonal warmth) 276 (the strictures of the lenten season) and 311.5 (the seasonal wheel).
145. LILITH may be her full name. See Jesus ben Sira, Alphabeta (ca.AD 700-900; tr. M. Stein-Schneider, 1858):
“When the Almighty - may His name be praised - created the first, solitary man, He said: It is not good for man to be alone. And he fashioned for man a woman from the earth, like him, and called her Lilith. Soon, they began to quarrel with each other. She said to him: I will not lie underneath, and he said: I will not lie underneath but above, for you are meant to lie underneath and I to lie above. She said to him: We are both equal, because we are both created from the earth. But they didn’t listen to each other. When Lilith saw this, she pronounced God’s avowed name and flew into the air. ...Immediately, the Almighty - may his name be praised - said to him: If she decides to return, it is good, but if not, then she must take it upon herself to ensure that a hundred of her children die each day.”
For a biblical reference to Lilith in the wilderness, see Isaiah 34:9-14 (Darby, 1890):
“And the torrents thereof shall be turned into pitch, and its dust into brimstone; yea, the land thereof shall become burning pitch: it shall not be quenched night nor day; the smoke thereof shall go up for ever: from generation to generation it shall lie waste; ...And he shall stretch out upon it the line of waste, and the plummets of emptiness. ...And thorns shall come up in her palaces, nettles and brambles in her fortresses; and it shall be a dwelling-place of wild dogs, a court for ostriches. And there shall the beasts of the desert meet with the jackals, and the wild goat shall cry to his fellow; the lilith also shall settle there, and find for herself a place of rest.”
Many other common translations interpret “lilith” more generically; the King James Version (1611) describes the lilith as a screech owl.
152. TIME: See note 141.
161. LIL’S ABORTION: To bring it off (line 159) is to have an abortion. The chemist is a pharmacist.
165. TIME: See note 141.
167. ANTISEMITISM, one of Eliot’s more notorious flaws, rears its ugly head rears here, as the Lil story first alludes to the outspoken Lilith from Jewish folk literature then concludes with a vulgar pork meal. Gammon is smoked ham; as used here, it also suggests a slang term for sexual intercourse.
The absence in this poem of any further antisemitic recurrence is thanks in part to Ezra Pound’s editing. A preliminary draft had contained a reference to a Jewish slur from one of Eliot’s earlier poems, Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar (1920), in which Eliot had written:
“The rats are underneath the piles.
The jew is underneath the lot.
Money in furs.”
Eliot had inserted Bleistein into The Waste Land with yet another reference to Ariel’s song (see note 26):
“Full fathom five your Bleistein lies
Under the flatfish and the squids,”
but Pound prevailed in having these lines deleted.
Pound also succeeded in having Eliot remove the whole of the poem Gerontion (1920), which included a reference to a stereotypically Jewish landlord:
“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.”
Eliot’s anti-semitism has relatively limited exposure within his poems, with these Bleistein and Gerontion infractions being the primary instances, but for more prominent examples see his social commentary in After Strange Gods (1934), The Idea of a Christian Society (1939) and Notes toward a Definition of Culture (1948), in which, collectively, he spoke out against a more pluralistic, secular society. Most directly, in After Strange Gods, he commented that a society with “too many free-thinking Jews” was undesirable. However, Eliot refused to have this essay republished beyond its limited first printing and conceded that it reflected a “disturbed” state of mind. See Michiko Kakutani, Critic's Notebook; Examining T. S. Eliot And Anti-Semitism: How Bad Was It? (New York Times, August 22, 1989). For a more unforgiving look, see Anthony Julius, T. S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism and Literary Form (1996).
170. GOONIGHT: A colloquial slurred version of goodbye from the regulars.
171. TA TA: A uniquely British, generally working-class goodbye, closing out this section and beginning to introduce the next. See note 172.5 for the recurrence of song syllables, especially in Part III.
172. OPHELIA’S FAREWELL, if not quite her final words, are alluded to here. See Shakespeare, Hamlet 4.5.70-73:
“And so I thank you for your good counsel. Come, my coach! Good night, ladies; good night, sweet ladies; good night, good night.”
And thus ends the air section. Ophelia has a few more lines in the play, but already she has lost her mind and the air about her is dying. Her words, mourning her father’s death at the hands of Hamlet, become fragmentary and nonsensical as she wanders off, and soon it will be reported that she had fallen into shallow waters and drowned. See the Queen’s report in Shakespeare, Hamlet 4.7.164-181:
“There is a willow grows askant the brook
That shows his hoary leaves in the glassy stream.
Therewith fantastic garlands did she make
Of crowflowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name
But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them.
There on the pendent boughs her crownet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke,
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide
And mermaid-like awhile they bore her up.
...But long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.”
For additional looks at the collection of flowers, see notes 74 and 214.
Ophelia’s death by water is further alluded to by lines 173-174 (“The river's tent is broken; the
last fingers of leaf / Clutch and sink into the wet bank”). See also note 42 for a list of the other
watery deaths in this poem.
140 I didn't mince my words, I said to her myself,
141 Hurry up please its time
142 Now Albert's coming back, make yourself a bit smart.
143 He'll want to know what you done with that money he
gave you
144 To get herself some teeth. He did, I was there.
145 You have them all out, Lil, and get a nice set,
146 He said, I swear, I can't bear to look at you.
147 And no more can't I, I said, and think of poor Albert,
148 He's been in the army for four years, he wants a good time,
149 And if you don't give it him, there's others will, I said.
150 Oh is there, she said. Something o' that, I said.
151 Then I'll know who to thank, she said, and give me a
straight look.
152 Hurry up please its time
153 If you don't like it you can get on with it, I said.
154 Others can pick and choose if you can't.
155 But if Albert makes off, it won't be for a lack of telling.
156 You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique.
157 (And her only thirty-one.)
158 I can't help it, she said, pulling a long face,
159 It's them pills I took, to bring it off, she said.
160 (She's had five already, and nearly died of young George.)
161 The chemist said it would be all right, but I've never been
the same.
162 You are a proper fool, I said.
163 Well, if Albert won't leave you alone, there it is, I said,
164 What you get married for if you don't want children?
165 Hurry up please its time
166 Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had a hot
gammon,
167 And they asked me in to dinner, to get the beauty of it
hot—
168 Hurry up please its time
169 Hurry up please its time
170 Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May. Goonight.
171 Ta ta. Goonight. Goonight.
172 Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night,
good night.
139. THE MAID’S STORY: See Eliot, F&T: This story was said to be related to the Eliots by their maid at the end of the war. To be demobbed, or demobilized, is to be discharged from military service.
141. TIME’S WINGED CHARIOT: “Hurry up please its time” reflects a common last call in English pubs. See also the witches before their boiling cauldron in Shakespeare, Macbeth 4.1.3:
“Harpier, cries:—‘’Tis time, ‘tis time.”
The cauldron over the fire is later alluded to at lines 307 and 308. The present “time” line repeats at lines 141, 152, 165, 168 and 169; this also follows the five counterpart repetitions of a less frantic mantra in Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock:
“There will be time.”
Compare the bartender’s reminders, and the concurrent advice being given to Lil, to the urgent “carpe diem” call of Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress (1681):
“Had we but world enough and time”
The mistress’s lover begins to wish they had time but quickly concludes that they don’t. See Eliot, Andrew Marvel (Times Literary Supplement, 03/31/1921), finding in Marvel’s Coy Mistress:
“an alliance of wit and seriousness (by which the seriousness is intensified).”
Coy Mistress allusions also appear at lines 185, 196 and 235. See especially note 197, for a modern variation to these lines:
“But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near.”
For some counterpace to Coy, compare the similar pub setting of line 260 and the poet’s unexpected appreciation for the music sometimes heard “beside a public bar.”
THE SEASONAL CYCLE: In response to the mistress’s master, and to the bartender, the wicked sisters of Macbeth, Lil’s advisor and Mr. Prufrock, see Ecclesiastes 3:1-8:
“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.”
The seasonal cycle of Ecclesiastes is central to many of Eliot’s allusions. See note 0.2 for the many references to renewal and note 0.3 for the consideration of ephemerality. For more specific references to the seasons, see notes 1 (Chaucer’s spring), 71 (the season of sowing and sprouting) 185 (the rattling bones of winter), 219 (the dry season of Gerontion), 253 (an unseasonal warmth) 276 (the strictures of the lenten season) and 311.5 (the seasonal wheel).
145. LILITH may be her full name. See Jesus ben Sira, Alphabeta (ca.AD 700-900; tr. M. Stein-Schneider, 1858):
“When the Almighty - may His name be praised - created the first, solitary man, He said: It is not good for man to be alone. And he fashioned for man a woman from the earth, like him, and called her Lilith. Soon, they began to quarrel with each other. She said to him: I will not lie underneath, and he said: I will not lie underneath but above, for you are meant to lie underneath and I to lie above. She said to him: We are both equal, because we are both created from the earth. But they didn’t listen to each other. When Lilith saw this, she pronounced God’s avowed name and flew into the air. ...Immediately, the Almighty - may his name be praised - said to him: If she decides to return, it is good, but if not, then she must take it upon herself to ensure that a hundred of her children die each day.”
For a biblical reference to Lilith in the wilderness, see Isaiah 34:9-14 (Darby, 1890):
“And the torrents thereof shall be turned into pitch, and its dust into brimstone; yea, the land thereof shall become burning pitch: it shall not be quenched night nor day; the smoke thereof shall go up for ever: from generation to generation it shall lie waste; ...And he shall stretch out upon it the line of waste, and the plummets of emptiness. ...And thorns shall come up in her palaces, nettles and brambles in her fortresses; and it shall be a dwelling-place of wild dogs, a court for ostriches. And there shall the beasts of the desert meet with the jackals, and the wild goat shall cry to his fellow; the lilith also shall settle there, and find for herself a place of rest.”
Many other common translations interpret “lilith” more generically; the King James Version (1611) describes the lilith as a screech owl.
152. TIME: See note 141.
161. LIL’S ABORTION: To bring it off (line 159) is to have an abortion. The chemist is a pharmacist.
165. TIME: See note 141.
167. ANTISEMITISM, one of Eliot’s more notorious flaws, rears its ugly head rears here, as the Lil story first alludes to the outspoken Lilith from Jewish folk literature then concludes with a vulgar pork meal. Gammon is smoked ham; as used here, it also suggests a slang term for sexual intercourse.
The absence in this poem of any further antisemitic recurrence is thanks in part to Ezra Pound’s editing. A preliminary draft had contained a reference to a Jewish slur from one of Eliot’s earlier poems, Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar (1920), in which Eliot had written:
“The rats are underneath the piles.
The jew is underneath the lot.
Money in furs.”
Eliot had inserted Bleistein into The Waste Land with yet another reference to Ariel’s song (see note 26):
“Full fathom five your Bleistein lies
Under the flatfish and the squids,”
but Pound prevailed in having these lines deleted.
Pound also succeeded in having Eliot remove the whole of the poem Gerontion (1920), which included a reference to a stereotypically Jewish landlord:
“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.”
Eliot’s anti-semitism has relatively limited exposure within his poems, with these Bleistein and Gerontion infractions being the primary instances, but for more prominent examples see his social commentary in After Strange Gods (1934), The Idea of a Christian Society (1939) and Notes toward a Definition of Culture (1948), in which, collectively, he spoke out against a more pluralistic, secular society. Most directly, in After Strange Gods, he commented that a society with “too many free-thinking Jews” was undesirable. However, Eliot refused to have this essay republished beyond its limited first printing and conceded that it reflected a “disturbed” state of mind. See Michiko Kakutani, Critic's Notebook; Examining T. S. Eliot And Anti-Semitism: How Bad Was It? (New York Times, August 22, 1989). For a more unforgiving look, see Anthony Julius, T. S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism and Literary Form (1996).
170. GOONIGHT: A colloquial slurred version of goodbye from the regulars.
171. TA TA: A uniquely British, generally working-class goodbye, closing out this section and beginning to introduce the next. See note 172.5 for the recurrence of song syllables, especially in Part III.
172. OPHELIA’S FAREWELL, if not quite her final words, are alluded to here. See Shakespeare, Hamlet 4.5.70-73:
“And so I thank you for your good counsel. Come, my coach! Good night, ladies; good night, sweet ladies; good night, good night.”
And thus ends the air section. Ophelia has a few more lines in the play, but already she has lost her mind and the air about her is dying. Her words, mourning her father’s death at the hands of Hamlet, become fragmentary and nonsensical as she wanders off, and soon it will be reported that she had fallen into shallow waters and drowned. See the Queen’s report in Shakespeare, Hamlet 4.7.164-181:
“There is a willow grows askant the brook
That shows his hoary leaves in the glassy stream.
Therewith fantastic garlands did she make
Of crowflowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name
But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them.
There on the pendent boughs her crownet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke,
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide
And mermaid-like awhile they bore her up.
...But long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.”
For additional looks at the collection of flowers, see notes 74 and 214.
Ophelia’s death by water is further alluded to by lines 173-174 (“The river's tent is broken; the
last fingers of leaf / Clutch and sink into the wet bank”). See also note 42 for a list of the other
watery deaths in this poem.
Thursday, June 16
Moleskin 3.6: Noticing The World
In 1974 the world started creeping in. This was the year Nixon resigned, right after the Tribune published the Watergate tapes. I had apparently lived a sheltered life up to this point, rarely if ever hearing people use “expletive deleted” in their conversations, and suddenly here was the president for all the world to read, absolutely full of it. Prior to this, for all the craziness going on in our country in those days, I only seemed to notice the upbeat news: watching the first moonlanding at Hank and Vi’s Minnesota cottage, for instance, or sharing Dad’s late interest in the Beatles. Even when he went out and bought John Lennon’s Imagine, I heard none of the blue chords, only the harmonies. Even Give Me Some Truth was a cool sort of anger. But then came Tricky Dick, daring me to take a peek behind the curtain.
Wednesday, June 15
God In The Abstract
with apologies to Concise American Heritage Dictionary, 1980
God
adj.
I AM: considered apart
from concrete
existence
or
(AM I) a specification
thereof.
I AM: theoretical;
not applied
or
(AM I) capable of being
put into effect.
I AM: thought of
or
(AM I) stated without
reference
to a specific
instance.
I AM: Fine Arts. with
nonobjective
design, form
or
(AM I) content.
Tuesday, June 14
Every Thought Is A Prayer
Journal Entries from June 1990, continued
How about this:
Every thought is a prayer to God, and every prayer has an answer within it. God is with us all the time, and when we remember this and believe this, his spirit responds in us and directs us. God directs us as long as we acknowledge his presence (Proverbs 3:6), but when we forget this, where are our thoughts, our prayers? Even then, God is still with us, waiting for us to call on him again.
Every thought is a prayer, how about that? But every day —isn’t it a shame? —we spend so much time being thoughtless. And still God is with us, waiting for us to come to our senses, to think, to pray.
God is more than an abstract thought, however. The proof is not, and cannot be, my own, but it is this: our thoughts do not sustain themselves. One private thought cannot sustain another, yet there is an answer, always, like the voice that came to Moses and said “I am.” God is an answer. Yahweh is the answer to our prayers. God is not a thought; God is “I am,” the answer.
But what about the so-called great thinkers of the world, those who say they do not pray because “there is no God”? God is still the answer, waiting for the question to be asked, the prayer to be prayed, the thought to occur (There are thoughts that have not yet occurred, even to the greatest thinkers). Every thought is a prayer, I said.
So what about the thought that God does not exist (and who has never cried, “Where are you, God?”)? Isn’t this simply thinking without direction, aimlessly pondering, oblivious meditation? Thoughtlessness, really. And still God waits with an answer. Is there a God? Yes, Yahweh say, I am.
How about this:
Every thought is a prayer to God, and every prayer has an answer within it. God is with us all the time, and when we remember this and believe this, his spirit responds in us and directs us. God directs us as long as we acknowledge his presence (Proverbs 3:6), but when we forget this, where are our thoughts, our prayers? Even then, God is still with us, waiting for us to call on him again.
Every thought is a prayer, how about that? But every day —isn’t it a shame? —we spend so much time being thoughtless. And still God is with us, waiting for us to come to our senses, to think, to pray.
God is more than an abstract thought, however. The proof is not, and cannot be, my own, but it is this: our thoughts do not sustain themselves. One private thought cannot sustain another, yet there is an answer, always, like the voice that came to Moses and said “I am.” God is an answer. Yahweh is the answer to our prayers. God is not a thought; God is “I am,” the answer.
But what about the so-called great thinkers of the world, those who say they do not pray because “there is no God”? God is still the answer, waiting for the question to be asked, the prayer to be prayed, the thought to occur (There are thoughts that have not yet occurred, even to the greatest thinkers). Every thought is a prayer, I said.
So what about the thought that God does not exist (and who has never cried, “Where are you, God?”)? Isn’t this simply thinking without direction, aimlessly pondering, oblivious meditation? Thoughtlessness, really. And still God waits with an answer. Is there a God? Yes, Yahweh say, I am.
Monday, June 13
Thoughts And Prayers
Journal Entries from June 1990, continued
Faith: such that I long for, a faith of such power to give me the strength to recognize my weakness, to repulse all illusions of my own credits, to relinquish my whole self —faith to say no more me, just God. Faith, trust, that I could walk within every shadow of darkness, that I could believe that light awaits me, that darkness will be defeated.
God, you lay it all out for us. You give us a one word direction and it ought to be easy. But I... the self gets in the way, and yet you have given us the self, too, God; you leave us all sorts of mysteries and then you give us this mind, that wants so much to know.
Thank you God, for the promises you have given Josh today and for the strength you have given to Don; for the smile you have given to Parul today and for the grace you have given her family. Thank you God for everyone close to me —Annie, Mom, Dan —and thank you too for everyday people, most of whose names I do not know, but thank you God for their patience —your patience —and acceptance of a man with measly faith. I am afraid to be weak, God, and I am afraid of relinquishing myself, even to my maker, but thank you God for your ears and your hand and your presence. Thank you for your strength and your smile and your grace, your light and your direction.
P.S., just one thing more: God bless my studies and my tests this week. I need you.
~~~~
The thought occurred to me that things will never be the same.
This wasn’t a pessimistic thought, either. Josh has realistic hope of a lasting remission. Don went to work today; he’s feeling much stronger and it makes me consider that with the extent of last week’s pain for him followed by this week’s recovery, the chemo might really be doing what we want it to do.
So I thought: what if Don’s tumor disappeared and Josh’s remission were complete? Things wouldn’t be the same; they would be better for the ways we would —and will! —be stronger: in spirits, in confidence, in faith. There is, of course, a “best case” scenario, to believe that Josh and Don will live forever. And why not? By faith, God promises that they will!
For now, however, I must continue to pray.
Faith: such that I long for, a faith of such power to give me the strength to recognize my weakness, to repulse all illusions of my own credits, to relinquish my whole self —faith to say no more me, just God. Faith, trust, that I could walk within every shadow of darkness, that I could believe that light awaits me, that darkness will be defeated.
God, you lay it all out for us. You give us a one word direction and it ought to be easy. But I... the self gets in the way, and yet you have given us the self, too, God; you leave us all sorts of mysteries and then you give us this mind, that wants so much to know.
Thank you God, for the promises you have given Josh today and for the strength you have given to Don; for the smile you have given to Parul today and for the grace you have given her family. Thank you God for everyone close to me —Annie, Mom, Dan —and thank you too for everyday people, most of whose names I do not know, but thank you God for their patience —your patience —and acceptance of a man with measly faith. I am afraid to be weak, God, and I am afraid of relinquishing myself, even to my maker, but thank you God for your ears and your hand and your presence. Thank you for your strength and your smile and your grace, your light and your direction.
P.S., just one thing more: God bless my studies and my tests this week. I need you.
~~~~
The thought occurred to me that things will never be the same.
This wasn’t a pessimistic thought, either. Josh has realistic hope of a lasting remission. Don went to work today; he’s feeling much stronger and it makes me consider that with the extent of last week’s pain for him followed by this week’s recovery, the chemo might really be doing what we want it to do.
So I thought: what if Don’s tumor disappeared and Josh’s remission were complete? Things wouldn’t be the same; they would be better for the ways we would —and will! —be stronger: in spirits, in confidence, in faith. There is, of course, a “best case” scenario, to believe that Josh and Don will live forever. And why not? By faith, God promises that they will!
For now, however, I must continue to pray.
Sunday, June 12
Prayers As They Occur
Journal Entries from June 1990
God, when the job at hand is more than I can handle,
God, when the pressure weighs heavy upon me,
God, when things are out of my hands,
when I am helpless, lost and looking for answers,
God, when I’ve buried my head in the sand,
sulked in my sorrows and wondered aloud
in a roomful of sufferers, selfishly cried “Why me?”
God, when I don’t know the answers,
God, when I think I need to know
as a matter of survival, life and death,
God, the power and the glory
and the answer, God, is yours.
~~~~
Parul is not happy with her mother today. They don’t want her going to India —because of money, because of safety, some other time maybe —and she’s disappointed. She threw some shoes at her mother and walked out of the house, eleven miles to 520 Stewart. She got rained on several times along the way.
She’s never been anywhere, she says, and now, forget it, she doesn’t want to go to India. “One day we’ll go together,” I said, and she said, “No, I don’t want to go.”
I brought her to her uncle’s house. She’s not sure what will happen next. She’s even having second thoughts about medical school.
“This too...” I said, but she wasn’t ready to believe me.
Tomorrow, God, I pray for Parul.
~~~~
“I talk to God a lot. In the shower, in the car. Some people might call it prayer, but I like to think of it as a kind of thought process, a figuring out.”
“Does he hear you?”
“God? Sure. God hears us whether we’re talking to him or not.”
“Hey, Joe, come on, what makes you think God would take the time to listen to you?
“I don’t know, Jim. I don’t know why. I just know he does.”
“How do you know?”
“He answers.”
God, when the job at hand is more than I can handle,
God, when the pressure weighs heavy upon me,
God, when things are out of my hands,
when I am helpless, lost and looking for answers,
God, when I’ve buried my head in the sand,
sulked in my sorrows and wondered aloud
in a roomful of sufferers, selfishly cried “Why me?”
God, when I don’t know the answers,
God, when I think I need to know
as a matter of survival, life and death,
God, the power and the glory
and the answer, God, is yours.
~~~~
Parul is not happy with her mother today. They don’t want her going to India —because of money, because of safety, some other time maybe —and she’s disappointed. She threw some shoes at her mother and walked out of the house, eleven miles to 520 Stewart. She got rained on several times along the way.
She’s never been anywhere, she says, and now, forget it, she doesn’t want to go to India. “One day we’ll go together,” I said, and she said, “No, I don’t want to go.”
I brought her to her uncle’s house. She’s not sure what will happen next. She’s even having second thoughts about medical school.
“This too...” I said, but she wasn’t ready to believe me.
Tomorrow, God, I pray for Parul.
~~~~
“I talk to God a lot. In the shower, in the car. Some people might call it prayer, but I like to think of it as a kind of thought process, a figuring out.”
“Does he hear you?”
“God? Sure. God hears us whether we’re talking to him or not.”
“Hey, Joe, come on, what makes you think God would take the time to listen to you?
“I don’t know, Jim. I don’t know why. I just know he does.”
“How do you know?”
“He answers.”
Saturday, June 11
TWL, Lines 112-138: Talk Of Wind And Nothingness
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
116 Where 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
125 Those are pearls that were his eyes.
126 “Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?”
127 But
128 O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag—
129 It's so elegant
130 So 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.
136 And if it rains, a closed car at four.
137 And we shall play a game of chess,
138 Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon
the door.
112. SPEAK: See Shakespeare, Hamlet 1.1.127-138 (Hamlet addressing the ghost of his father): “Speak to me.”
113. QUESTIONS keep coming up, don’t they? One is left unmarked, at line 112 (Why do you never speak), but questions are regularly punctuated at lines 20, 34, 72ff, 113ff, 131ff, 164, 299, 360ff, 402 and 426. Questions are also alluded to by the epigraph and by lines 26, 30, 48, 118,182, 186, 309, and 400.
116. RAT’S ALLEY was a World War I slang term for battlefield trenches. See also the recurrence of bones “rattled by the rat’s foot” at lines 194-195, and see note 186.
118. THE WIND: Eliot: “Cf. Webster: ‘Is the wind in that door still?’”
See John Webster, The Devil’s Lawcase 3.2.164 (1623), and see all of scene 2 for the context. Two surgeons come upon a man being stabbed, ostensibly to death; the surgeons consider how they might make money off of the perpetrator by promising to keep quiet, when the victim groans. They first pretend it is only the wind they hear, but they know better and quickly realize that by healing the victim they can profit from both sides.
123. NOTHINGNESS: See Shakespeare, Hamlet 3.4.128-131:
“HAMLET: Do you see nothing there?
QUEEN: Nothing at all, yet all that is I see.
HAMLET: Nor did you nothing hear?
QUEEN: No, nothing but ourselves.”
Nothingness, emptiness and brokenness pervade this poem. See lines 22, 40, 119-126, 173, 177, 303-305, 385, 389, 409, 410, 417 and 427. Compare these lines with the humble thoughts of Kurtz’s “last disciple” in Conrad, Heart of Darkness 3:
“I am a simple man. I have no great thoughts. I want nothing from anybody.”
125. PEARLY EYES: Eliot: “Cf. Part I, l. 37, 48.” This is Eliot’s quiet hint tying the hyacinth prince of line 37 (“...your arms full and your hair wet”) to the drowned sailor of line 48 (“Those are pearls that were his eyes,” alluding to Shakespeare, The Tempest 1.2.399).
126. ALIVE, OR NOT: Wondering about being “alive, or not” follows lines 39-40: “I was neither / Living nor dead, and I knew nothing...” which alludes to Dante, Inferno 34:25:
“I did not die, and I alive remained not.”
128. HAMLET’S LAST WORDS: See Shakespeare, Hamlet 5.2.342-349 (Folio ed., 1623):
“O, I die, Horatio.
The potent poison quite o’ercrows my spirit,
I cannot live to hear the news from England,
But I do prophesy th'election lights
On Fortinbras: he has my dying voice.
So tell him with th’occurrents more and less
Which have solicited – The rest is silence.
O, o, o, o.”
In the earlier Quarto editions, Hamlet’s words end with “silence” (compare line 434, ending this poem with “Shantih shantih shantih”). See also line 172 for an allusion to Ophelia’s farewell words ("Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night"), from Shakespeare, Hamlet 4.5.70-73.
130. RAGTIME: See Gene Buck & Herman Ruby, The Zeigfield Follies, That Shakespearean Rag (1912):
“That Shakespearian rag-- Most intelligent, very elegant,...”
Ragtime literature, a term coined by Clive Bell, criticized Eliot and others for “flout[ing] traditional rhythms and sequences and grammar and logic” and following the less than serious trend of jazz performers. See Bell, Since Cezanne: Plus De Jazz (1922). Eliot was talented, Bell premised, but
“...[his] agonizing labours seem to have been eased somewhat by the comfortable ministrations of a black and grinning muse.”
If anything, though, Eliot's "comfortable" passages are dissonant and uneasy. Socialites talk of their day plans (lines 131-138) in a snippet conspicuously placed between the emptiness of a domestic difference (lines 111-126) and the gossipy ramble of a soldier’s return to the homefront (lines 139-171). These bits are interspersed with brief notes of mortality, a “ministration” based on Hamlet’s fading breaths (line 128) and a string of pub farewells that echo Ophelia’s morbid goodbyes (line 172). There will be more songs in the poem’s next section, and they will become less oblique, but this is, for now, as musical as it gets.
SHAKESPEARE VS. DANTE: In the midst of this Shakespearean “rag,” we are reminded of Dante’s continuing role as escort throughout this poem. Eliot would later pose a comparison of the counterparts in Eliot, Dante: II. The Purgatorio and the Paradiso (1929):
“...Gradually we come to admit that Shakespeare understands a greater extent and variety of human life than Dante; but that Dante understands deeper degrees of degradation and higher degrees of exaltation. And a further wisdom is reached when we see clearly that this indicates the equality of the two men.”
(For a similar, if tangential, take, see Frank Budgen, James Joyce and the Making of Ulysses, 1934: “...When the question, often put, ‘If on a desert island what one book?’ was again raised, Joyce said: ‘I should hesitate between Dante and Shakespeare but not for long. The Englishman is richer...’” But see Joyce's recapitulation in Richard Ellman, James Joyce (1959): “‘I love Dante almost as much as the Bible. He is my spiritual food, the rest is ballast.’”)
For the record, these annotations have more references to Shakespeare (45 different passages; see note 0.1) than the Bible (34 passages; see note 0.5) or Dante (22; see note 0.1) or any other source. The next most frequently turned to sources are Virgil (9; see note 0.1), Whitman (9; see note 2), Augustine (7; see note 307), Ovid (7; see note 0.3) and Conrad (7; see note 0.3).
131. WHAT SHALL I DO: More questions, and more Hamlet allusions. See Shakespeare, Hamlet 1.4.57, for Hamlet’s reaction after his father’s ghost appears:
“Say, why is this? Wherefore? What should we do?”
See also Hamlet 3.4.178, when the Queen fails to see or hear her late husband’s ghost and asks, even after her son challenges her:
“What shall I do?”
Compare the indecisiveness of Hamlet and his mother in the face of a familiar ghost to those whom death has undone at the gates of hell for having “lived withouten infamy or praise.” See note 63 and Dante, Inferno 3:35-57.
137. DIVERSIONARY GAMES: Eliot: “Cf. the game of chess in Middleton's Women Beware Women.”
See Thomas Middleton, A Game at Chess (1624); and see also Middleton, Women Beware Women (1657), in which a girl is seduced while her mother in law is kept busy in the next room playing chess. See also note 76.5 for other games of chess.
138. LIDLESS EYES: See Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Inclusiveness (1881):
“The changing guests, each in a different mood,
Sit at the roadside table and arise:
And every life among them in likewise
Is a soul’s board set daily with new food.
What man has bent o’er his son’s sleep, to brood
How that face shall watch his when cold it lies?—
Or thought, as his own mother kissed his eyes,
Of what her kiss was when his father wooed?
May not this ancient room thou sit’st in dwell
In separate living souls for joy or pain?
Nay, all its corners may be painted plain
Where Heaven shows pictures of some life spent well;
And may be stamped, a memory all in vain,
Upon the sight of lidless eyes in Hell.”
In an earlier manuscript, in a section edited after Vivienne’s objection, Eliot had referred to the statuary chess pieces in an extra line between “a game of chess” and “pressing lidless eyes”: “The ivory men make company between us.”
Compare the “vials of ivory and coloured glass” at line 86, and also compare the pearly eyes of the hyacinth prince and the drowned sailors (note 125). See also Oscar Wilde, The Sphinx (1894), speaking of the statue that “strains his lidless eyes Across the empty land.”
For an alternative and perhaps more disparate image, see W.B. Yeats, Upon A House Shaken By The Land Agitation (1916), referring to the eagle’s ability to stare at the sun without blinking, with “the lidless eye that loves the sun.” By way of reconciling this with the chess pieces, compare the image of line 22: “a heap of broken images, where the sun beats,” and see also the white skeletons of soldiers at note 186.
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
116 Where 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
125 Those are pearls that were his eyes.
126 “Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?”
127 But
128 O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag—
129 It's so elegant
130 So 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.
136 And if it rains, a closed car at four.
137 And we shall play a game of chess,
138 Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon
the door.
112. SPEAK: See Shakespeare, Hamlet 1.1.127-138 (Hamlet addressing the ghost of his father): “Speak to me.”
113. QUESTIONS keep coming up, don’t they? One is left unmarked, at line 112 (Why do you never speak), but questions are regularly punctuated at lines 20, 34, 72ff, 113ff, 131ff, 164, 299, 360ff, 402 and 426. Questions are also alluded to by the epigraph and by lines 26, 30, 48, 118,182, 186, 309, and 400.
116. RAT’S ALLEY was a World War I slang term for battlefield trenches. See also the recurrence of bones “rattled by the rat’s foot” at lines 194-195, and see note 186.
118. THE WIND: Eliot: “Cf. Webster: ‘Is the wind in that door still?’”
See John Webster, The Devil’s Lawcase 3.2.164 (1623), and see all of scene 2 for the context. Two surgeons come upon a man being stabbed, ostensibly to death; the surgeons consider how they might make money off of the perpetrator by promising to keep quiet, when the victim groans. They first pretend it is only the wind they hear, but they know better and quickly realize that by healing the victim they can profit from both sides.
123. NOTHINGNESS: See Shakespeare, Hamlet 3.4.128-131:
“HAMLET: Do you see nothing there?
QUEEN: Nothing at all, yet all that is I see.
HAMLET: Nor did you nothing hear?
QUEEN: No, nothing but ourselves.”
Nothingness, emptiness and brokenness pervade this poem. See lines 22, 40, 119-126, 173, 177, 303-305, 385, 389, 409, 410, 417 and 427. Compare these lines with the humble thoughts of Kurtz’s “last disciple” in Conrad, Heart of Darkness 3:
“I am a simple man. I have no great thoughts. I want nothing from anybody.”
125. PEARLY EYES: Eliot: “Cf. Part I, l. 37, 48.” This is Eliot’s quiet hint tying the hyacinth prince of line 37 (“...your arms full and your hair wet”) to the drowned sailor of line 48 (“Those are pearls that were his eyes,” alluding to Shakespeare, The Tempest 1.2.399).
126. ALIVE, OR NOT: Wondering about being “alive, or not” follows lines 39-40: “I was neither / Living nor dead, and I knew nothing...” which alludes to Dante, Inferno 34:25:
“I did not die, and I alive remained not.”
128. HAMLET’S LAST WORDS: See Shakespeare, Hamlet 5.2.342-349 (Folio ed., 1623):
“O, I die, Horatio.
The potent poison quite o’ercrows my spirit,
I cannot live to hear the news from England,
But I do prophesy th'election lights
On Fortinbras: he has my dying voice.
So tell him with th’occurrents more and less
Which have solicited – The rest is silence.
O, o, o, o.”
In the earlier Quarto editions, Hamlet’s words end with “silence” (compare line 434, ending this poem with “Shantih shantih shantih”). See also line 172 for an allusion to Ophelia’s farewell words ("Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night"), from Shakespeare, Hamlet 4.5.70-73.
130. RAGTIME: See Gene Buck & Herman Ruby, The Zeigfield Follies, That Shakespearean Rag (1912):
“That Shakespearian rag-- Most intelligent, very elegant,...”
Ragtime literature, a term coined by Clive Bell, criticized Eliot and others for “flout[ing] traditional rhythms and sequences and grammar and logic” and following the less than serious trend of jazz performers. See Bell, Since Cezanne: Plus De Jazz (1922). Eliot was talented, Bell premised, but
“...[his] agonizing labours seem to have been eased somewhat by the comfortable ministrations of a black and grinning muse.”
If anything, though, Eliot's "comfortable" passages are dissonant and uneasy. Socialites talk of their day plans (lines 131-138) in a snippet conspicuously placed between the emptiness of a domestic difference (lines 111-126) and the gossipy ramble of a soldier’s return to the homefront (lines 139-171). These bits are interspersed with brief notes of mortality, a “ministration” based on Hamlet’s fading breaths (line 128) and a string of pub farewells that echo Ophelia’s morbid goodbyes (line 172). There will be more songs in the poem’s next section, and they will become less oblique, but this is, for now, as musical as it gets.
SHAKESPEARE VS. DANTE: In the midst of this Shakespearean “rag,” we are reminded of Dante’s continuing role as escort throughout this poem. Eliot would later pose a comparison of the counterparts in Eliot, Dante: II. The Purgatorio and the Paradiso (1929):
“...Gradually we come to admit that Shakespeare understands a greater extent and variety of human life than Dante; but that Dante understands deeper degrees of degradation and higher degrees of exaltation. And a further wisdom is reached when we see clearly that this indicates the equality of the two men.”
(For a similar, if tangential, take, see Frank Budgen, James Joyce and the Making of Ulysses, 1934: “...When the question, often put, ‘If on a desert island what one book?’ was again raised, Joyce said: ‘I should hesitate between Dante and Shakespeare but not for long. The Englishman is richer...’” But see Joyce's recapitulation in Richard Ellman, James Joyce (1959): “‘I love Dante almost as much as the Bible. He is my spiritual food, the rest is ballast.’”)
For the record, these annotations have more references to Shakespeare (45 different passages; see note 0.1) than the Bible (34 passages; see note 0.5) or Dante (22; see note 0.1) or any other source. The next most frequently turned to sources are Virgil (9; see note 0.1), Whitman (9; see note 2), Augustine (7; see note 307), Ovid (7; see note 0.3) and Conrad (7; see note 0.3).
131. WHAT SHALL I DO: More questions, and more Hamlet allusions. See Shakespeare, Hamlet 1.4.57, for Hamlet’s reaction after his father’s ghost appears:
“Say, why is this? Wherefore? What should we do?”
See also Hamlet 3.4.178, when the Queen fails to see or hear her late husband’s ghost and asks, even after her son challenges her:
“What shall I do?”
Compare the indecisiveness of Hamlet and his mother in the face of a familiar ghost to those whom death has undone at the gates of hell for having “lived withouten infamy or praise.” See note 63 and Dante, Inferno 3:35-57.
137. DIVERSIONARY GAMES: Eliot: “Cf. the game of chess in Middleton's Women Beware Women.”
See Thomas Middleton, A Game at Chess (1624); and see also Middleton, Women Beware Women (1657), in which a girl is seduced while her mother in law is kept busy in the next room playing chess. See also note 76.5 for other games of chess.
138. LIDLESS EYES: See Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Inclusiveness (1881):
“The changing guests, each in a different mood,
Sit at the roadside table and arise:
And every life among them in likewise
Is a soul’s board set daily with new food.
What man has bent o’er his son’s sleep, to brood
How that face shall watch his when cold it lies?—
Or thought, as his own mother kissed his eyes,
Of what her kiss was when his father wooed?
May not this ancient room thou sit’st in dwell
In separate living souls for joy or pain?
Nay, all its corners may be painted plain
Where Heaven shows pictures of some life spent well;
And may be stamped, a memory all in vain,
Upon the sight of lidless eyes in Hell.”
In an earlier manuscript, in a section edited after Vivienne’s objection, Eliot had referred to the statuary chess pieces in an extra line between “a game of chess” and “pressing lidless eyes”: “The ivory men make company between us.”
Compare the “vials of ivory and coloured glass” at line 86, and also compare the pearly eyes of the hyacinth prince and the drowned sailors (note 125). See also Oscar Wilde, The Sphinx (1894), speaking of the statue that “strains his lidless eyes Across the empty land.”
For an alternative and perhaps more disparate image, see W.B. Yeats, Upon A House Shaken By The Land Agitation (1916), referring to the eagle’s ability to stare at the sun without blinking, with “the lidless eye that loves the sun.” By way of reconciling this with the chess pieces, compare the image of line 22: “a heap of broken images, where the sun beats,” and see also the white skeletons of soldiers at note 186.
Friday, June 10
TWL, Line 111: The Nervous Speaker
111 “My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me...”
111. CAST OF CHARACTERS: This is the fifth directly quoted passage of The Waste Land, after THE SYBIL’s wish to die (line 0.3), THE HYACINTH GIRL remembering how she was named (lines 35-36), THE POET calling out to his reader STETSON (lines 69-76) and the inviolable cry of THE NIGHTINGALE (line 103, and see lines 203-206). Only three more direct quotes will follow: single lines from THE LOVELY WOMAN (line 252) and the Tempest’s ARIEL (line 257), then the songs of THE THREE THAMES DAUGHTERS (lines 292-305).
With a total of fourteen lines (lines 111-14, 117, 119, 121-123, 126, 131-134), THE NERVOUS SPEAKER has the most extended of the quoted passages, and it is interspersed, sans quotation marks, by the responsive dialogue of THE SPEAKER’S COMPANION. The two speakers hear one another, so the lack of quotations of the companion appears to be simply a means to distinguish them. This also happens, though without interactive dialogue, after the Hyacinth Girl speaks (lines 37-41), and the two passages are even related: “I knew nothing,” says the Hyacinth Girl’s respondent (line 40); “Do you know nothing?” the nervous speaker retorts (lines 121-122); the Hyacinth Girl’s respondent observes “your hair wet” (line 37) while the nervous speaker mentions going outside with her hair down (line 133), after which her companion considers that it might rain (line 136).
Separately, several other characters appear without quotation marks, often in pairs: before this, MARIE and a GERMAN COFFEE DRINKER (lines 5-18), a PROPHET speaking to THE SON OF MAN (lines 19-30), a VIGILANT SAILOR (lines 31-34, 42), MADAME SOSOSTRIS (lines 46-59); after this, LIL and a BARTENDER (lines 139-172) and the blind TIRESIUS (lines 215-248), endured by the Lovely Woman.
Beyond these, there are no clearly distinguishable speeches in the poem, though myriad other voices, or “fragments,” as the Poet suggests (line 431), can be heard within the flow of musings and allusions. One could cast these fragments as separate characters, but really they are more reflections of either the Poet, e.g., THE FISHER KING (lines 182-202 and 424-426), or the city around him, e.g, BABY-FACED BATS (lines 380-385). There are also at least six prominent characters in the poem who do not speak: the spoken-to STETSON (lines 69-76), the Cleopatra-like QUEEN (lines 77-110), MR. EUGENIDES (lines 207-214), PHLEBAS THE PHOENICIAN (lines 312-321), THE WALKING COMPANION (lines 360-366) and a BLACK-HAIRED WOMAN (lines 378-385).
So who is the nervous speaker? There are ambiguities tying all the characters together throughout the poem (see note 39), and here it is no different: by the context of dialog, the nervous speaker would seem to be the Hyacinth Girl or the walking companion; by appearance she might be the lovely woman or the black-haired woman; by her melancholy she could be the Sybil or the nightingale or one of the Thames daughters; by her spouse-like behavior she could be Lil or the queen or, with an external reference, Eliot’s wife Vivienne. Perhaps most conclusively, within the continual stream of fragments she, or he, would seem to be an extension of the Poet himself.
DIFFERENT VOICES: See F&T*: Before it was The Waste Land, this poem’s working title was “He Do The Police In Different Voices.” See James Joyce, Ulysses, Circe 555 (1922), and compare the echo of this passage at lines 308-311:
“VOICES
Police!
DISTANT VOICES
Dublin's burning! Dublin's burning! On fire, on fire!”
Thursday, June 9
Moleskin 3.5: Scrabble Days
Meanwhile we always had our dad’s living arrangements to remind us to be thankful. In the course of two years, before finally leaving the Chicago chapter of his life story, Dad lived in a series of three gritty, minimalist spaces, mirroring a temporal nightshift existence. The series showed gradual improvement, from the third floor inner city SRO with wire mesh in the windows and boilerplates across the ceilings to, eventually, the suburban arrangement with a roommate who was singularly record-obsessed, with wall to ceiling milk rates full of vinyl. My brother Dan and I (Josh at four and five stayed with Mom more) spent weekends at each of these places, but it was the middle one, the Dolphin Motel, I remember most. It was a small room with water stains and signs of rodents and a bar/lounge off the lobby, but it had a pool! And it was here at the Dolphin that my dad taught me to enjoy the simple pace of a Saturday game of Scrabble —with an eleven year old allowance to use the dictionary as much as I needed.
Wednesday, June 8
Hawk Block
A Palinode to an Earlier Draft
Effectively I killed my poem
like a hawk that kills the weak, the sick, the old;
Defined it by the second line
as a predator that seizes stumbling souls;
Declared its features unsubdued
like shrieks across a universal sky;
Discovered Death in stanza two
as a bird reflecting dinner in its eye,
Foreshadowing the obvious,
the destiny of creatures great and small
And celebrating the irony
of grace within three pounds of caterwaul.
Repeatedly analogies
went flying through the predatory air
Pronouncing the mortality
of all who are alive, awake, aware.
The sad thing is, I love this bird:
I watch it catch the kettles high above
On muscled wings, remote controlled,
in the spirit of the words I’m dreaming of
But never grasp: I watch it soar
untethered to the world till all I see
Is the distance of its silhouette
becoming an enigma over me:
A mystery, yet clearly made
of more than Death compressed onto a page
Of whiteness, more than irony
observed within an origami cage,
And more than all my heavy paint
can capture. Now, beyond all odes, this bird
That let me love it from afar
lives on but flies away without a word.
Effectively I killed my poem
like a hawk that kills the weak, the sick, the old;
Defined it by the second line
as a predator that seizes stumbling souls;
Declared its features unsubdued
like shrieks across a universal sky;
Discovered Death in stanza two
as a bird reflecting dinner in its eye,
Foreshadowing the obvious,
the destiny of creatures great and small
And celebrating the irony
of grace within three pounds of caterwaul.
Repeatedly analogies
went flying through the predatory air
Pronouncing the mortality
of all who are alive, awake, aware.
The sad thing is, I love this bird:
I watch it catch the kettles high above
On muscled wings, remote controlled,
in the spirit of the words I’m dreaming of
But never grasp: I watch it soar
untethered to the world till all I see
Is the distance of its silhouette
becoming an enigma over me:
A mystery, yet clearly made
of more than Death compressed onto a page
Of whiteness, more than irony
observed within an origami cage,
And more than all my heavy paint
can capture. Now, beyond all odes, this bird
That let me love it from afar
lives on but flies away without a word.
Tuesday, June 7
Denouement
For my daughter
If I were the falconer
I might never let go;
I’d hold on to the tether
and you’d learn how to fly
in small circles around me:
I’d want you to know
the spirit of freedom,
so I’d give you the sky
in gradual increments,
ever so slowly
releasing you outward
and upward, and I
would remain in the center
within and below you,
the turn of your wild
and the ground to your sky,
the tame of your will
and the stage for your show,
but the one who allows you
the power to fly
is the one who eventually
has to let go.
I am not the falconer;
I don’t rule your sky,
nor would I deny you
the winds of your freedom,
but I will stand fast
in the fields you came from
calling your name out
and watching you fly.
If I were the falconer
I might never let go;
I’d hold on to the tether
and you’d learn how to fly
in small circles around me:
I’d want you to know
the spirit of freedom,
so I’d give you the sky
in gradual increments,
ever so slowly
releasing you outward
and upward, and I
would remain in the center
within and below you,
the turn of your wild
and the ground to your sky,
the tame of your will
and the stage for your show,
but the one who allows you
the power to fly
is the one who eventually
has to let go.
I am not the falconer;
I don’t rule your sky,
nor would I deny you
the winds of your freedom,
but I will stand fast
in the fields you came from
calling your name out
and watching you fly.
Monday, June 6
More From The Archives: Another Introduction
Denouement.
That's a fancy French word for untangling, and in literature it applies to the point of the story where everything turns towards the final resolutions.
In most stories, we might expect this to happen on the final pages or in the final chapter, but in a good story you might start to see this even from the beginning. I like the way John Ylvisaker puts it in his song, Borning Cry, which begins:
I was there to hear your borning cry.
I'll be there when you grow old.
I was there the day you were baptized
To see your life unfold.
Unfolding: Untangling: Denouement
I thought of this about four years ago when my daughter crossed the stage for her eighth grade graduation. And I'll be thinking of it all over again this June as she graduates from high school, and I have had, and will have, the same thoughts at my son's graduations.
As parents, we'd like to think that we have so much to do with the plots of our children's lives, but we really don't, and when it comes down to it, we are just fortunate - blessed - to be in the audience, cheering them on.
Sunday, June 5
Ramadan
The rock behind the rock we're on
was hidden from our point of view
until it caught the setting sun
and nothing but a sliver to
paint shadows on our faces and
give us a dusky hint of who
we are at night: we're all the same,
imperfect sinners turning to
the stars, a cross, a crescent moon
and taking time for penance: you
have Lent and we have Ramadan
and each of us is hoping to
make it to heaven somehow and
get through life on this rock we're on.
I don't pretend to understand
the purpose of the fasting or
the reason we should watch the moon.
I guess it meant something before
they called it Lent or Ramadan,
before we rested faith upon
the Prophet's revelations or
the resurrection of the Son,
but this is what we're looking for:
salvation past the ceremonies,
focus in our daily worship,
sustenance beyond the sunset,
anything to make us more
at peace and not at odds upon
this hot, dry dessert rock we're on.
was hidden from our point of view
until it caught the setting sun
and nothing but a sliver to
paint shadows on our faces and
give us a dusky hint of who
we are at night: we're all the same,
imperfect sinners turning to
the stars, a cross, a crescent moon
and taking time for penance: you
have Lent and we have Ramadan
and each of us is hoping to
make it to heaven somehow and
get through life on this rock we're on.
I don't pretend to understand
the purpose of the fasting or
the reason we should watch the moon.
I guess it meant something before
they called it Lent or Ramadan,
before we rested faith upon
the Prophet's revelations or
the resurrection of the Son,
but this is what we're looking for:
salvation past the ceremonies,
focus in our daily worship,
sustenance beyond the sunset,
anything to make us more
at peace and not at odds upon
this hot, dry dessert rock we're on.
Saturday, June 4
Hawk Diode
You are predator, defined by what you eat
And how you singularly look for food,
Your every feature focused, unsubdued
To rightly seize the daily running meat:
Head down, tail flared and talons out for blood,
Lean muscles tensed and dinner in your eyes
With mercenary sense to recognize
Your victims from afar, and yet you would
Toll from your scythian beak a curling call
And let your ancient raptor’s feathers cast
Their moving shadow on the ground. We earthly
Creatures feel the shadow’s chill and pall
And all that it foretells; our hearts beat faster
Still as you pronounce our mortal worth.
You are pacifist, designed to fly above
The fray, to find your spirit in the sky
On wings extended and uplifting, high
Above the inevitable chaos of
Our gravity, beyond our battlegrounds
And burial grounds, intractable and free.
Your revolutions of serenity
Enlist us all to tarry out of bounds,
To turn aside from where we find ourselves
If only to appreciate the strength
Of heavenly peace and how you always seem
So far away from where you ought to be:
There you are, a predator at length,
And here are we, lost in our mortal dream.
And how you singularly look for food,
Your every feature focused, unsubdued
To rightly seize the daily running meat:
Head down, tail flared and talons out for blood,
Lean muscles tensed and dinner in your eyes
With mercenary sense to recognize
Your victims from afar, and yet you would
Toll from your scythian beak a curling call
And let your ancient raptor’s feathers cast
Their moving shadow on the ground. We earthly
Creatures feel the shadow’s chill and pall
And all that it foretells; our hearts beat faster
Still as you pronounce our mortal worth.
You are pacifist, designed to fly above
The fray, to find your spirit in the sky
On wings extended and uplifting, high
Above the inevitable chaos of
Our gravity, beyond our battlegrounds
And burial grounds, intractable and free.
Your revolutions of serenity
Enlist us all to tarry out of bounds,
To turn aside from where we find ourselves
If only to appreciate the strength
Of heavenly peace and how you always seem
So far away from where you ought to be:
There you are, a predator at length,
And here are we, lost in our mortal dream.
Friday, June 3
TWL, Lines 94-110: Withered Stumps Of Time
94 Huge sea-wood fed with copper
95 Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone,
96 In which sad light a carvèd dolphin swam.
97 Above the antique mantel was displayed
98 As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene
99 The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king
100 So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale
101 Filled all the desert with inviolable voice
102 And still she cried, and still the world pursues,
103 “Jug Jug” to dirty ears.
104 And other withered stumps of time
105 Were told upon the walls; staring forms
106 Leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed.
107 Footsteps shuffled on the stair.
108 Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair
109 Spread out in fiery points
110 Glowed into words, then would be savagely still.
98. THE SYLVAN SCENE: Eliot: “Sylvan scene. V. Milton, Paradise Lost, IV, 140.”
See John Milton, Paradise Lost 137-142 (1667), where Satan is describing Eden:
“...and over head up grew
Insuperable highth of loftiest shade,
Cedar, and Pine, and Firr, and branching Palm
A Silvan Scene, and as the ranks ascend
Shade above shade, a woodie
Theatre Of stateliest view.”
Compare the “sylvan landscape” of Frazer and Turner (note 0.2).
99. THE CHANGE OF PHILOMEL: Eliot:
“V. Ovid, Metamorphoses, VI, Philomela.”
This is a rape and revenge tale from Ovid, Metamorphoses 6.635-1053. Procne, far from home, had longed for a visit from her sister Philomela, so the girls’ father let Philomela sail home with Procne’s husband Tereus:
“Now Philomela, scarce receiv'd on board,
And in the royal gilded bark secur'd,
Beheld the dashes of the bending oar,
The ruffled sea, and the receding shore;
When strait (his joy impatient of disguise)
We've gain'd our point, the rough Barbarian cries;
Now I possess the dear, the blissful hour,
And ev'ry wish subjected to my pow'r.
Then, before bringing her home,
the false tyrant seiz'd the princely maid,
And to a lodge in distant woods convey'd;...”
and there with “rude haste” he raped her. She cried out to her sister and father in vain but then promised:
“...Tho' I'm prison'd in this lonely den,
Obscur'd, and bury'd from the sight of men,
My mournful voice the pitying rocks shall move,
And my complainings echo thro' the grove...”
This provoked the king to cut off her tongue, but she still later told her sister what had happened by weaving the episode into a wall tapestry (compare note 8 and lines 97 and 104-110); she fulfilled her promise further by filling the forest air with a song of her story after they were all changed into birds, Philomela and Procne into a nightingale and a swallow (sometimes interpreted vice versa), Tereus into a hoopoe.
103. THE NIGHTINGALE’S SONG: Eliot: “Cf. Part III, l. 204."
This refers us forward to the nightingale at lines 203-206. See also note 198, where nightbirds are likened to prostitutes. For the song itself, see John Lyly, Alexander and Campaspe (1584):
“Jug, jug, jug, jug, tereu,’ she cries,
And still her woes at midnight rise.”
95 Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone,
96 In which sad light a carvèd dolphin swam.
97 Above the antique mantel was displayed
98 As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene
99 The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king
100 So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale
101 Filled all the desert with inviolable voice
102 And still she cried, and still the world pursues,
103 “Jug Jug” to dirty ears.
104 And other withered stumps of time
105 Were told upon the walls; staring forms
106 Leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed.
107 Footsteps shuffled on the stair.
108 Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair
109 Spread out in fiery points
110 Glowed into words, then would be savagely still.
98. THE SYLVAN SCENE: Eliot: “Sylvan scene. V. Milton, Paradise Lost, IV, 140.”
See John Milton, Paradise Lost 137-142 (1667), where Satan is describing Eden:
“...and over head up grew
Insuperable highth of loftiest shade,
Cedar, and Pine, and Firr, and branching Palm
A Silvan Scene, and as the ranks ascend
Shade above shade, a woodie
Theatre Of stateliest view.”
Compare the “sylvan landscape” of Frazer and Turner (note 0.2).
99. THE CHANGE OF PHILOMEL: Eliot:
“V. Ovid, Metamorphoses, VI, Philomela.”
This is a rape and revenge tale from Ovid, Metamorphoses 6.635-1053. Procne, far from home, had longed for a visit from her sister Philomela, so the girls’ father let Philomela sail home with Procne’s husband Tereus:
“Now Philomela, scarce receiv'd on board,
And in the royal gilded bark secur'd,
Beheld the dashes of the bending oar,
The ruffled sea, and the receding shore;
When strait (his joy impatient of disguise)
We've gain'd our point, the rough Barbarian cries;
Now I possess the dear, the blissful hour,
And ev'ry wish subjected to my pow'r.
Then, before bringing her home,
the false tyrant seiz'd the princely maid,
And to a lodge in distant woods convey'd;...”
and there with “rude haste” he raped her. She cried out to her sister and father in vain but then promised:
“...Tho' I'm prison'd in this lonely den,
Obscur'd, and bury'd from the sight of men,
My mournful voice the pitying rocks shall move,
And my complainings echo thro' the grove...”
This provoked the king to cut off her tongue, but she still later told her sister what had happened by weaving the episode into a wall tapestry (compare note 8 and lines 97 and 104-110); she fulfilled her promise further by filling the forest air with a song of her story after they were all changed into birds, Philomela and Procne into a nightingale and a swallow (sometimes interpreted vice versa), Tereus into a hoopoe.
103. THE NIGHTINGALE’S SONG: Eliot: “Cf. Part III, l. 204."
This refers us forward to the nightingale at lines 203-206. See also note 198, where nightbirds are likened to prostitutes. For the song itself, see John Lyly, Alexander and Campaspe (1584):
“Jug, jug, jug, jug, tereu,’ she cries,
And still her woes at midnight rise.”
Thursday, June 2
Moleskin 3.4: Another Move
The following spring found us settling into our second urban home. It wasn’t a big move, four blocks, and I kept the same friends and the same paper route. I don’t even remember the U-Haul this time, but the transition was still remarkable: our townhome life was now squeezed into an apartment, with dinner smells in the hallways and yappy dogs behind neighbors’ doors. Dad’s station wagon was no longer the primary transportation; now it was a coupe: Mom’s no-frills Dodge Dart. We no longer had our own garbage cans: now it was a big dumpster a dozen yards down the sidewalk from our doors. We never had much of a yard to mow at the townhome, but now we were limited to garden pots on a 3 x 6 patio. It was what our mother could afford on nursing home wages. Not that there was much to grumble about: my friends all lived in townhomes and duplexes, if not apartments, and we were hardly the only latchkey kids in the neighborhood. None of us lived very far away from the drainage ditch, and everything was still an adventure.
Wednesday, June 1
Crossing Quatrains
How long
will this river flow
the country’s culminated streams
connecting unseen mountain sources
to the ocean,
bringing dreams to distant dreams?
How long
will the water run
beneath this road turned into bridge,
beneath the feet
of all who pass from bank to bank
half grateful for this lifted street?
How long
will this stretch of street
in time remain
suspended shore to shifting shore
above the rise and sink of seasons,
of mountain trickle and ocean roar?
This river will
outlast us, all our lives combined
and every street along the way,
and even as I form these words,
I feel
the bridge begin to sway.
This bolted iron in the wind
is likely to outlast us too;
we may
grow old together, but
if time’s the measure we cannot do
what bridges do.
will this river flow
the country’s culminated streams
connecting unseen mountain sources
to the ocean,
bringing dreams to distant dreams?
How long
will the water run
beneath this road turned into bridge,
beneath the feet
of all who pass from bank to bank
half grateful for this lifted street?
How long
will this stretch of street
in time remain
suspended shore to shifting shore
above the rise and sink of seasons,
of mountain trickle and ocean roar?
This river will
outlast us, all our lives combined
and every street along the way,
and even as I form these words,
I feel
the bridge begin to sway.
This bolted iron in the wind
is likely to outlast us too;
we may
grow old together, but
if time’s the measure we cannot do
what bridges do.
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