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