The Waste Land and Other Poems (8 page)

Grishkin
³
is nice: her Russian eye
Is underlined for emphasis;
Uncorseted, her friendly bust
Gives promise of pneumatic bliss.

 

The couched Brazilian jaguar
Compels the scampering marmoset
With subtle effluence of cat;
Grishkin has a maisonette;

 

The sleek Brazilian jaguar
Does not in its arboreal gloom
Distil so rank a feline smell
As Grishkin in a drawing-room.

 

And even the Abstract Entities
⁴
Circumambulate her charm;
But our lot crawls between dry ribs
To keep our metaphysics warm.

THE JEW OF MALTA.
¹

 

 

Polyphiloprogenitive
²
The sapient sutlers
³
of the Lord
Drift across the window-panes.
In the beginning was the Word.

 

In the beginning was the Word.
Superfetation
⁴
of τò eν,
⁵
And at the mensual
⁶
turn of time
Produced enervate Origen.
⁷

 

A painter of the Umbrian school
⁸
Designed upon a gesso ground
⁹
The nimbus
¹⁰
of the Baptized God.
The wilderness is cracked and browned

 

But through the water pale and thin
Still shine the unoffending feet
And there above the painter set
The Father and the Paraclete.
¹¹

The sable presbyters
¹²
approach
The avenue of penitence;
The young are red and pustular
Clutching piaculative pence.
¹³

 

Under the penitential gates
Sustained by staring Seraphlm
¹⁴
Where the souls of the devout
Burn invisible and dim.

Along the garden-wall the bees
With hairy bellies pass between
The staminate and pistillate,
¹⁵
Blest office of the epicene.
¹⁶

 

Sweeney shifts from ham to ham
Stirring the water in his bath.
The masters of the subtle schools
Are controversial, polymath.
¹⁷

µoi, πεληγµαi kαiρíαν πληγὴν ἔσω.
²

Apeneck Sweeney spreads his knees
Letting his arms hang down to laugh,
The zebra stripes along his jaw
Swelling to maculate
³
giraffe.

 

The circles of the stormy moon
Slide westward toward the River Plate,
⁴
Death and the Raven drift above
And Sweeney guards the hornèd gate.

 

Gloomy Orion and the Dog
⁵
Are veiled; and hushed the shrunken seas;
The person in the Spanish cape
Tries to sit on Sweeney’s knees

 

Slips and pulls the table cloth
Overturns a coffee-cup,
Reorganized upon the floor
She yawns and draws a stocking up;

 

The silent man in mocha brown
Sprawls at the window-sill and gapes;
The waiter brings in oranges
Bananas figs and hothouse grapes;

 

The silent vertebrate in brown
Contracts and concentrates, withdraws;
Rachel
née
Rabinovitch
Tears at the grapes with murderous paws;
⁶

 

She and the lady in the cape
Are suspect, thought to be in league;
Therefore the man with heavy eyes
Declines the gambit, shows fatigue,

 

Leaves the room and reappears
Outside the window, leaning in,
Branches of wistaria
Circumscribe a golden grin;

 

The host with someone indistinct
Converses at the door apart,
The nightingales are singing near
The Convent of the Sacred Heart,
⁷

 

And sang within the bloody wood
When Agamemnon
⁸
cried aloud,
And let their liquid siftings fall
To stain the stiff dishonoured shroud.

‘Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent:
Σiβνλλα
τí
θeλεiς;
respondebat illa:
απoθανεiν θéλω.’
¹

 

For Ezra Pound
il miglior fabbro.
²

April is the cruellest month,
²
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
³
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the
colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
⁴
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt
deutsch.
⁵
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,
⁶
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,
⁷
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.

‘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
.
⁹

 

 

Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards.
¹⁰
Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes.
¹¹
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,
¹²
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.
¹³
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
¹⁴
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.
¹⁵
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying:
‘Stetson!
‘You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
¹⁶
‘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?
‘O keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,
¹⁷
‘Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!
‘You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable.—mon
frère!’
¹⁸

The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,
²
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,
³
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 carved dolphin swam.
Above the antique mantel was displayed
As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene
⁴
The change of Philomel,
⁵
by the barbarous king
So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale
⁶
Filled all the desert with inviolable voice
And still she cried, and still the world pursues,
‘Jug Jug’ to dirty ears.
And other withered stumps of time
Were told upon the walls; staring forms
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 to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me.
‘Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak.
‘What are you thinking of? What thinking?
What?
‘I never know what you are thinking. Think.’

 

I think we are in rats’ alley
⁷
Where the dead men lost their bones.

 

‘What is that noise?’
The wind under the door.
⁸
‘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.
⁹
‘Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your
head?’

But

 

 

OOOOthat Shakespeherian Rag
¹⁰
_
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
to-morrow?
‘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.
¹¹

 

 

When Lil’s husband got demobbed,
¹²
I said—
I didn’t mince my words, I said to her myself,
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
¹³
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 ITS TIME
If you don’t like it you can get on with it, I said.
Others can pick and choose if you can’t.
But if Albert makes off, it won’t be for lack of
telling.
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 ITS TIME
Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had a hot
gammon,
¹⁴
And they asked me in to dinner, to get the beauty
of it hot—
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May.
Goonight.
Ta ta. Goonight. Goonight.
Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good
night, good night.
¹⁵