NOTES

Eliot completes The Waste Land with his own detailed end notes. They inform. I am not convinced they illuminate, nor were intended to do so.

He published The Waste Land in 1922. The ravages of the Great War must surely have informed the pessimism - perhaps fatalism is better - of the poem.

Five million died in Povolshye famine of 1921-1923. Did Eliot notice? The Holocaust, Dresden, Nanking, Hiroshima, the killing fields of Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Syria and much more were still to come.

Sigmund Freud wrote, also in 1922, "The facts that have led us to believe in the supremacy of the pleasure-principle in psychic life also find expression in the hypothesis that there is an attempt on the part of the psychic apparatus to keep the quantity of excitation present as low as possible..."  Perhaps the waste emerges from this tension.

There is waste and worse. We are a cruel race, especially rough with beauty which we typically break or bury alive.

And yet, I have mostly argued alternatives.

Beauty abides side by side our cruelty.  We love and murder with similar intensity.  A man conceived and constructed London Bridge and Magnus Martyr, even as other men displaced one and interred the other.

I am slightly embarrassed to admit, the single most powerful literary influence on my actual living is The Secret Garden (1911).  There is profound neglect, horrible loss, deep separation.  There is also beauty reclaimed, life restored, and wholehearted love known for the very first time.

Brokenness and healing are each real.  Choice is not the only source or cause.  Choosing the good, the true or the beautiful does not ensure our claim.  But without choosing, the default is decay.

“Might I," quavered Mary, "might I have a bit of earth?”

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
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.

      Shantih     shantih     shantih

Μῦθος ὁ τῶν τεττίγων καὶ τῶν μυρμήκων προτρεπόμενος τοὺς νέους εἰς πόνους
Everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen.
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
Of these fragments I have made a foundation
What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?
Faith. Hope. Love.

     And the greatest of these is love

I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
Shall I at least set my lands in order?

London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down

I sit upon the mountain
Writing, with the green meadow before me
Shall I at least give thanks?

Ring around the rosy,
A pocket full of posy.
Ashes, Ashes, we all fall down.

Damyata: The boat responded
Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar
The sea was calm, your heart would have responded
Gaily, when invited, beating obedient
To controlling hands

Agape: The stream flows
Unceasing, tumbling to the sea
Beyond azure coasts, the sea churns
Unceasing, lifting to the moon
Crashing to the shore

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
Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus
DA

Elpis:
My love seems mere lust
My love seems merely sensuous

My love seems mere sentiment
My love seems merely impetuous

My love seems mere neurosis
My love seems merely vivacious

My love seems mere complacense
My love seems merely spontaneous

My love seems mere dalliance
My love seems merely extemporaneous

When saying, "I love you,"
I mean that in you and through you
I find a ground of being
I know a wide angle of reality
I engage myself and non-self
With much less ambiguity
Than without you and only with you

Appearance is ambiguous
Experience is ambiguous
Life is ambiguous

But in you and through you
I touch a wholeness
Emerging and absorbing
Transforming and revealing
AH

Datta: what have we given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment’s surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed
Which is not to be found in our obituaries
Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
In our empty rooms
DA

Pistis: What have we given?
Blood rushing, hormones gushing
Desire's fitful murmurs
Two bodies breathing, slowly dying
There's all that,
                       and
A shared meal
Honest hearing
Tender smiles
The knowing ahhh
Of two lives touching
Which is not to be found in our obituaries
But unfolds in this moment
Uninvited, unexpected, and whole
AH

Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
Waited for rain, while the black clouds
Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
The jungle crouched, humped in silence.
Then spoke the thunder
DA

Leaves drop from the tree
As a mother weeps for her dead child
Another and another, heavy with death
No breeze to scatter
No dance across the grass
Drop, drop, drop
Carcass of shriveled springtime
Corpses of summer sun
Drop

In this decayed hole among the mountains
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s home.
It has no windows, and the door swings,
Dry bones can harm no one.
Only a cock stood on the rooftree
Co co rico co co rico
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain

Along this broad river flowing to the sea
In the early morning, dry rushes are dancing
Over the cascade of waters glistening
There a cathedral, built by faithful hands
Arched windows sparkling, towers climbing skyward,
Chapter and lay praising and confessing
A priest at the altar says:
Bless the Lord who forgiveth all our sins
The people reply:
His mercy endureth for ever
Bright light flowing through bodies of prophets
The choir singing kyrie eleison

A woman drew her long black hair out tight
And fiddled whisper music on those strings
And bats with baby faces in the violet light
Whistled, and beat their wings
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall
And upside down in air were towers
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.

Seest thou these great buildings? there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down...

For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows...

Now the brother shall betray the brother to death, and the father the son; and children shall rise up against their parents, and shall cause them to be put to death...

And the stars of heaven shall fall, and the powers that are in heaven shall be shaken...

Take ye heed, watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is...

And what I say unto you I say unto all, Watch.

γρηγορέω

What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal

Pain
Cruelty
Betrayal
          are real

Blindness
Boredom
Banality
         are common

Sky
Stars
Beauty
         abound

Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
—But who is that on the other side of you?

And it came to pass, as he sat at meat with them, he took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them. And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he vanished out of their sight.

The "treasure hard to attain" lies hidden in the ocean of the unconscious, and only the brave can reach it. I conjecture that the treasure is also the "companion," the one who goes through life at our side - in all probability a close analogy to the lonely ego who finds a mate in the self, for at first the self is the strange non-ego. This is the theme of the magical traveling companion, of whom I will give three famous examples: the disciples on the road to Emmaus, Krishna, and Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita, Moses and El-Khidr in Sura 18 of the Koran.

You
Me
Another?

You me our otherness
Traveling together
Arriving apart

You
Me
More?

And no rock
If there were rock
And also water
And water
A spring
A pool among the rock
If there were the sound of water only
Not the cicada
And dry grass singing
But sound of water over a rock
Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But there is no water

In thee, O Lord, do I put my trust; let me never be ashamed: deliver me in thy righteousness. Bow down thine ear to me; deliver me speedily: be thou my strong rock, for an house of defence to save me. For thou art my rock and my fortress; therefore for thy name's sake lead me, and guide me.

O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is.

There is no water
There is only rock
And the cicada singing
And a dry wind
Then a still small voice

From time to time the soul sees this flame and this enkindling grows so greatly within that it desires God with a yearning love. This love is not as a rule felt at first, but only the dryness and emptiness.

And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake: And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.

Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain
There is not even solitude in the mountains
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
From doors of mud-cracked houses
If there were water

And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? which is, being interpreted, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

And some of them that stood by, when they heard it, said, Behold, he calleth Elias.

And one ran and filled a spunge full of vinegar, and put it on a reed, and gave him to drink, saying, Let alone; let us see whether Elias will come to take him down.

And Jesus cried with a loud voice, and gave up the ghost.

Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
If there were only water amongst the rock

And all the congregation of the children of Israel journeyed from the wilderness of Sin, after their journeys, according to the commandment of the LORD, and pitched in Reph'idim: and there was no water for the people to drink.

Wherefore the people did chide with Moses, and said, Give us water that we may drink. And Moses said unto them, Why chide ye with me? wherefore do ye tempt the LORD?

And the people thirsted there for water; and the people murmured against Moses, and said, Wherefore is this that thou hast brought us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our cattle with thirst?

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
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

We who live
Still sweat with effort

Summer gardens abuzz
Still abound with fragrance

Stones make stairs
Still reaching toward stars

Pitch and place and reverberation
Still combine as music

Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
Still living, if soon enough dead

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
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
                                Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

I live
I am living now
I am living here, then there

I choose
I am choosing now
I am choosing this, then that

I ride currents
I am rolled, tossed
I glide gently with a breeze

I will die, but first
I will live full and whole as
I learn the good, true, and beautiful

To Carthage then I came

Burning burning burning burning
O Lord Thou pluckest me out
O Lord Thou pluckest

burning

To Carthage then I came, where there sang all around me in my ears a cauldron of unholy loves. I loved not yet, yet I loved to love, and out of a deep-seated want, I hated myself for wanting not. I sought what I might love, in love with loving, and safety I hated, and a way without snares. For within me was a famine of that inward food, Thyself, my God; yet, through that famine I was not hungered; but was without all longing for incorruptible sustenance, not because filled therewith, but the more empty, the more I loathed it.

+++

“All things, O priests, are on fire. And what, O priests, are all these things which are on fire?

“The eye, O priests, is on fire; forms are on fire; eye-consciousness is on fire; impressions received by the eye are on fire; and whatever sensation, pleasant, unpleasant, or indifferent, originates in dependence on impressions received by the eye, that also is on fire.

“And with what are these on fire?

“With the fire of passions, say I, with the fire of hatred, with the fire of infatuation, with birth, old age, death, sorrow, lamentation, misery, grief, and despair are they on fire.

“The ear is on fire; sounds are on fire; ...the nose is on fire; odors are on fire; ...the tongue is on fire; tastes are on fire; ...the body is on fire; ideas are on fire; ...mind-consciousness is on fire; impressions received by the mind are on fire; and whatever sensation, pleasant, unpleasant, or indifferent, originates in dependence on impressions received by the mind, that also is on fire.

“And with what are these on fire?

“With the fire of passion, say I, with the fire of hatred, with the fire of lamentation; with birth, old age, death, sorrow, lamentation, misery, grief, and despair are they on fire.

To Carthage I came, where there sang all around me in my ears a cauldron of unholy loves. I loved not yet, yet I loved to love, and out of a deep-seated want, I hated myself for wanting not. I sought what I might love, in love with loving, and safety I hated, and a way without snares. For within me was a famine of that inward food, Thyself, my God; yet, through that famine I was not hungered; but was without all longing for incorruptible sustenance, not because filled therewith, but the more empty, the more I loathed it.

“Perceiving this, O priests, the learned and noble disciple conceives an aversion for the eye, conceives an aversion for forms, conceives an aversion for eye-consciousness, conceives are aversion for the impressions received by the eye; and whatever sensation, pleasant, unpleasant, or indifferent, originates in dependence on impressions received by the eye, for that also he conceives an aversion. Conceives an aversion for the ear, conceives an aversion for sounds, ...conceives an aversion for the nose, conceives an aversion for odors, ...conceives an aversion for the tongue, conceives an aversion for tastes, ...conceives an aversion for the body, conceives an aversion for thing tangible, ...conceives an aversion for the mind, conceives an aversion for ideas, conceives an aversion for mind- consciousness, conceives an aversion for the impressions received by the mind; and whatever sensation, pleasant, unpleasant, or indifferent, originates in dependence on impressions received by the mind, for this also he conceives an aversion. And in conceiving this aversion, he becomes divested of passion, and by the absence of passion he becomes free, and when he is free he becomes aware that he is free; and he knows that rebirth is exhausted, that he has lived the holy life, that he has done what it behooved him to do, and that he is no more for this world.”

Now while this exposition was being delivered, the minds of the thousand priests became free from attachment and delivered from the depravities.

"On Margate Sands.
I can connect
Nothing with nothing.
The broken finger-nails of dirty hands.
My people humble people who expect
Nothing.” 
        la la

Each
in relationship with all
All
in relationship with each
Subtle
influence pulls me toward
You
resist and yet
Connect

“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?”

Keats was born
At the Swan and Hoop
199 Moorgate

He wrote
"Beauty is truth
Truth beauty..."

Which Eliot found:
A serious blemish on a beautiful poem,
either I fail to understand it,
or it is a statement which is untrue.
Keats seems to me meaningless:
or perhaps the fact that it is grammatically meaningless
conceals another meaning from me

Τί ἐστιν ἀλήθεια

Cricket on the Kew Green, St. Anne's in the background

“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.“

We are born
Do and are undone
We die

But beginning in Highbury
Ending in Richmond or Kew
Tells of very profitable doing

Valerie's obituary appeared
Today in the Telegraph
She has returned to Tom

And is becoming acquainted with Vivienne

Elizabeth and Leicester
Beating oars
The stern was formed
A gilded shell
Red and gold
The brisk swell
Rippled both shores
South-west wind
Carried down stream
The peal of bells
White towers
                          Weialala leia
                          Wallala leialala

Yes, our excess
is somehow less

Shakespeare then
Now Dancing with the Stars

Where Wren built beauty
We throw up banality

And... the sick are healed
The poor need not die cold

The Queen reigns
No longer rules

We have received
Our daily bread

But have been
Led into temptation

Mistaking accumulation
for arete

Exchanging wisdom
for wealth

The river sweats
Oil and tar
The barges drift
With the turning tide
Red sails
Wide
To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.
The barges wash
Drifting logs
Down Greenwich reach
Past the Isle of Dogs.
                              Weialala leia
                              Wallala leialala

Dame Sun
sends down her rays of light;
night lies in the depths:
once they were bright,
when safe and glorious
our father's gold gleamed there.
Rhinegold!
Lustrous gold!
How brightly you once shone,
majestic star of the deep!

(They resume their swimming dance)

                              Weialala leia,
                              Wallala leialala.

(A horncall in the distance: they listen.
They splash joyful in the water)

There is loss
There is degradation
There is destruction, death

Too often
We choose wealth
Instead of loving and being loved

Der Welt Erbe
gewänne mir ein Ring:
- für der Minne Gunst
miss' ich ihn gern; -
ich geb' ihn euch, gönnt ihr mir Lust.

                           Götterdämmerung

Magnus Martyr then

“This music crept by me upon the waters”
And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street.
O City City, I can sometimes hear
Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street,
The pleasant whining of a mandoline
And a clatter and a chatter from within
Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls
Of Magnus Martyr hold
Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.

What we have lost
or abandoned
can be sacralized in regret

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets,
and stonest them that are sent unto thee;
how often would I have gathered thy children together,
as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings,
and ye would not!"

Yet what is lost, may be found
Abandoned, redeemed
In memory and more.

"Where should this music be? i' the air or the earth?
It sounds no more: and sure, it waits upon
Some god o' the island. Sitting on a bank,
Weeping again the king my father's wreck,
This music crept by me upon the waters,
Allaying both their fury and my passion
With its sweet air: thence I have follow'd it,
Or it hath drawn me rather. But 'tis gone.
No, it begins again."

Retrieving in joy
Restoring in love
Releasing the sacred from seclusion.

Magnus Martyr now

She turns and looks a moment in the glass,
Hardly aware of her departed lover;
Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:
“Well now that’s done: and I’m glad it’s over.”
When lovely woman stoops to folly and
Paces about her room again, alone,
She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,
And puts a record on the gramophone.

What will I do today
What will I choose
And Why
When I finish the day
Will I be happy with what I've done
Glad with what I've finished
And Why

The time is now propitious, as he guesses,
The meal is ended, she is bored and tired,
Endeavours to engage her in caresses
Which still are unreproved, if undesired.
Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;
Exploring hands encounter no defence;
His vanity requires no response,
And makes a welcome of indifference.
(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all
Enacted on this same divan or bed;
I who have sat by Thebes below the wall
And walked among the lowest of the dead.)
Bestows one final patronizing kiss,
And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit…

Mistaking our desire

We make a pain of pleasure

Confusing our needs

Conversation or copulation

Caress or coitus

Clarity, even completion, comes from

Confession, compassion, communion...

Out of the window perilously spread
Her drying combinations touched by the sun’s last rays,
On the divan are piled (at night her bed)
Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.
I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs
Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest—
I too awaited the expected guest.
He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,
A small house-agent’s clerk, with one bold stare,
One of the low on whom assurance sits
As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.

Simplicity can be elegant
Poverty need not forsake dignity
Failure is often the foundation of success
Much depends on what we choose to see
In our here, our now, ourselves, the other
Each has its ugly angle
Each abides with God.

At the violet hour, when the eyes and back
Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits
Like a taxi throbbing waiting,
I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see
At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives
Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,
The typist home at tea-time, clears her breakfast, lights
Her stove, and lays out food in tins.

Tiresias knew one reality,
Then two.
Seeing survival's struggle
He struck,
And was thoroughly
Transformed,
Understanding the other's
Mysteries,
Becoming in one self both
Her and him.
Through this wholeness
Seeing
Realities still to come.

Unreal City
Under the brown fog of a winter noon
Mr Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant
Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants
C. i. f. London: documents at sight,
Asked me in demotic French
To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel
Followed by a week-end at the Metropole.

In the so-called sixth borough
Amidst the soft grays of a cloudy day
I ate a late lunch
White bean, kale, and onion soup

Reading in the Times
Of human suffering
Cold hungry fear

With a fluffy tomato and zucchini tart

Reading emails
Searching for kosher MREs
Lost children and gas stations

Completed with a fair Côtes du Rhône

The Hoopoe bird, named for its call. Tereus was transformed

into this bird by the Olympians

Twit twit twit
Jug jug jug jug jug jug
So rudely forc’d.
Tereu

Tereus
Son of god
King of Thrace
Purposeful predator
Unwilling cannibal
Villain and victim
Raping, cutting, running, eating, finally flying

Hoopoe

O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter
And on her daughter
They wash their feet in soda water
Et, O ces voix d’enfants, chantant dans la coupole! 

The moon shines bright on me
And my wife
Walking the meadow and hillside
Un oiseau sur, l'arbre qu'on voit Chante sa plainte.

Trans: A bird in the tree one hears sadly singing.

Parsifal has vanquished the Damsels, their gentle
Babble and amusing luxury, and their bent
Toward the Flesh of the virgin boy they would tempt
To love their glowing breasts and their gentle babble.

He has vanquished the Woman with heart so subtle,
Displaying her tempting arms and throat like a lily bent;
He has vanquished Hades and returned to his tent
With the heavy trophy of burnished metal

With the spear in his arms that pierced the Saviour's side.
He has healed the king and now a king, in his pride,
He has himself become - priest of the Holy Grail.

He kneels to adore in garments of golden fire
The vase where the Saviour's blood like the morning shines -
And, O, the voices of children singing in the choir!

Paul Verlaine

White bodies naked on the low damp ground
And bones cast in a little low dry garret,
Rattled by the rat’s foot only, year to year. 
But at my back from time to time I hear
The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring
Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring.

Life is archaeology
Layer by layer
We are formed
Palace to market to dump
Trash becoming treasure
One faith traded for the next
Death unfolding into life
Today dying into tomorrow

A rat crept softly through the vegetation
Dragging its slimy belly on the bank
While I was fishing in the dull canal
On a winter evening round behind the gashouse.
Musing upon the king my brother’s wreck
And on the king my father’s death before him.

The lamp said
Four o'clock
The wind said
Stay in bed
But the wind was waning
At sundown it was a constant gale
The lights flickered and finally failed
Now gusts give way to quiet
Lazy rain dripping at the window
The little lamp spreads a ring on page seventeen:
     The lamp sputtered
     The lamp muttered in the dark
     The lamp hummed:
     Regard the moon
And the gospel begins:
"Your eye is the lamp of your body"

And their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors;
Departed, have left no addresses.
By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept…
Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,
Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.
But at my back in a cold blast I hear
The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.

By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.
We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.
For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.
How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?

There is waste, much waste
There is anger, much anger
And death's rattle shakes
With earthquake, fire, and flood
But there is also
Beauty, so very beautiful.
Wonder, so very wonderful
and a symphony with song from the whirlwind

III. THE FIRE SERMON

The river’s tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf
Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind
Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.
Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.
The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,
Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends
Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed.

Two of those Nymphs, mean-while, two Garlands bound,
Of freshest Flowers, which in that Mead they found,
The which presenting all in trim Array,
Their snowy Foreheads therewithal they crown'd,
Whilst one did sing this Lay,
Prepar'd against that Day,
Against that Bridal-day, which was not long:
Sweet Thames run softly till I end my Song.

Ye gentle Birds, the World's fair Ornament,
And Heaven's Glory, whom this happy Hour
Doth lead unto your Lovers blissful Bower,
Joy may you have, and gentle Hearts Content
Of your Love's Complement:
And let fair Venus, that is Queen of Love,
With her Heart-quelling Son upon you smile;
Whose Smile they say, hath Vertue to remove
All Love's Dislike, and Friendship's faulty Guile
For ever to assoil.
Let endless Peace your stedfast Hearts accord,
And blessed Plenty wait upon your Bord;
And let your Bed with Pleasures chaste abound,
That fruitful Issue may to you afford,
Which may your foes confound,
And make your Joys redound
Upon your Bridal-day, which is not long:
Sweet Thames run softly, till I end my Song.

E. Spenser

HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had a hot gammon,
And they asked me in to dinner, to get the beauty of it hot—
HURRY UP PLEASE 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.

Knowing when to leave
Can be the heroic choice
Knowing when your role is finished
Your value-added done
Not to abandon,
Nor deny what's still to come
But at the right time, to go
without complaint or show

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 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?

Saying nothing,
Can be heroic too
From a void much may come
Doing nothing
Can be heroic
Creating space for others
Not stony silence
Nor cautious avoidance
But peaceful stillness blooming

When Lil’s husband got demobbed, I said,
I didn’t mince my words, I said to her myself,
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,
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.

Appearance counts
80 percent of success is showing up
10 percent is how you look and what you say
Appearing at the right time
Saying something worthwhile
Actually doing something constructive
         That's practically heroic.

“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.

What shall I do now? What shall I do?
I shall stay where I am, write and read and think
Stroke my cat or bury him
Consider catastrophic consequences
                                       At noon I'll take some sun.
And after lunch, gather some timber,
And build a trellis,
Walking the meadow and watching the sun fall behind the mountains.

“What is that noise?”
              The wind under the door.
“What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?”
               Nothing again nothing.
                                       “Do
You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember
Nothing?”
     I remember
           Those are pearls that were his eyes.
“Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?”
                                                          But
O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag—
It’s so elegant
So intelligent

Ariel singing to Ferdinand:

"Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
 Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell."

Comedy or tragedy
are our errors
Much depends on how a scene is played
Pride is seldom (never?) noble
Either foolish or fatal
Always falling
for a laugh or lesson

“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
Where the dead men lost their bones.

We hunger and thirst for relationship
Conversation, companionship
We hope to know, even more to be known

Struggling to escape the banal, angry, and sad
Too often settling for shared space and a strong drink
We want inspiration, exaltation, and dancing

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.

There are stumps, branches and roots
Does time also have seeds?
Deboule to fouetté to grand jeté
Dense concoctions of possibility
Seeking a moist jagged wound
There to open, unfold, become

Huge sea-wood fed with copper
Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone,
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
Filled all the desert with inviolable voice
And still she cried, and still the world pursues,
“Jug Jug” to dirty ears.

"What bird so sings, yet does so wail?
 O, 'tis the ravish'd nightingale--
 Jug, jug, jug, jug--tereu, she cries,
 And still her woes at midnight rise."

Of Saint Joan with child, the Duke of York says,
"She and the Dauphin have been juggling:
I did imagine that would be her refuge."

"Still at his mother's neck he fondly aims,
And strives to melt her with endearing names;
Yet still the cruel mother perseveres,
Nor with concern his bitter anguish hears.
This might suffice; but Philomela too
Across his throat a shining curtlass drew.
Then both, with knives, dissect each quiv'ring part,
And carve the butcher'd limbs with cruel art;
Which, whelm'd in boiling cauldrons o'er the fire,
Or turn'd on spits, in steamy smoak aspire:
While the long entries, with their slipp'ry floor,
Run down in purple streams of clotted gore."

"Cry out aloud on Itys! memory
That foster-brother of remorse and pain
Drops poison in mine ear,—O to be free"

Φιλομήλα
Athenian princess, beautiful sister
From pain came change

"In faith, I cannot: what would you have me do?
A juggling trick,--to be secretly open."

II. A GAME OF CHESS

The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Glowed on the marble, where the glass
Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines
From which a golden Cupidon peeped out
(Another hid his eyes behind his wing)
Doubled the flames of sevenbranched candelabra
Reflecting light upon the table as
The glitter of her jewels rose to meet it,
From satin cases poured in rich profusion;
In vials of ivory and coloured glass
Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes,
Unguent, powdered, or liquid—troubled, confused
And drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the air
That freshened from the window, these ascended
In fattening the prolonged candle-flames,
Flung their smoke into the laquearia,
Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling.

Outside my experience
Another gender
A different set altogether

My grandma, true, had a vanity
Where she carefully did her face
Appended a blue-tinged periwig
And with lipstick she would trace

Grandma smelled of lilac cologne
and neither candelabra
nor cupidon were anywhere in her home

Corpse Plant

There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying “Stetson!
You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
Has it begun to sprout? 
Will it bloom this year?
Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,
Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!
You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!”

Hannibal Gisco - not Lector nor Barca - retreated at Agrigentum
Surprised Scipio Asina - not Asinus - at Lipari
Was in turn surprised at Mylae, not My Lai
Returned home to Carthage to be crucified by his own men
(The sources do not tell us if he was surprised)
Is it his corpse that Stetson has planted in the garden?
Ask Hannibal's corpse, is there a corvus to the next world?
Can we cross to a quick quinqueremis making for a heavenly port?
Or are we planted in the muck and mud of our own making?

Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.

Ancient Mountain,
Under stars of a moonless night,
I walk alone up the hill, two hours from dawn
Saying, "I am glad to be dying with Topaz".
Breathing deep and exhaling long,
My eyes scan the sky far above.
At the hilltop trees open to meadow
And the house where I write these words
Is bright with light and the smell of coffee.

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.

LEO. (July 22 - Aug. 21): Today brings confirmation that things are on the move. This isn't the time to lose your nerve. You'll be happy when you finish what you started.

Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
The lady of situations.
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.

Phlebas, the drowned Phoenician sailor, is ready for a sea-change. The Queen of Cups holds out the Grail to the seeker who perseveres in his quest to heal the Fisher King. We can still spin The Wheel of Fortune for a chance at a new life, while compassion and connection to others is in our grasp if we balance our lives and share our gifts. Our own destiny is still to be written on the blank card, and if we search for The Hanged Man, we can right him and accept his blessing and wisdom. (Carole Pierce)

“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.
Öd’ und leer das Meer.

The wild and empty sea
is not always wild
and never empty
But seaside we often
find our hidden selves
swept upon the shore

Frisch weht der Wind
Der Heimat zu,
Mein Irisch Kind,
Wo weilest du?

Fresh the wind blows
towards home,
My Irish child,
Where are you now?

              (Wagner, Tristan und Isolde)

I am home
where memory
arrives in gusts
of sweet nostalgia and smoky regret

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

See, a king will reign in righteousness
and rulers will rule with justice.
Each one will be like a shelter from the wind
and a refuge from the storm,
like streams of water in the desert
and the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land.
Then the eyes of those who see will no longer be closed,
and the ears of those who hear will listen.
The fearful heart will know and understand,
and the stammering tongue will be fluent and clear.

Isaiah 32:1-4
'
Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it. Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher; all is vanity.

 Ecclesiastes 12:7-8

Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke’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.

The moments seem fragile: a coffee in Vienna,
Christmas morning in Tangier
Fragrant lavender, a bright sun, ships sliding through the straits,
Sharing steamy crisp sardines in San Francisco,
A glass of wine and a toffee-tasting cheese in New York,
Snow dancing with steam above the rotembro.
Yet these memories persist, still pulsing the senses
While more earnest days and ambitious efforts
have fallen to pieces, dusty and dead.

I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.

Is then October the kindest month, raking
fallen petals of the last flowers, harvesting
pride and failure, tasting
the last plump purple fig?
Summer overheated us, causing
each tendril to over-reach, feeding
our desires with wine and honey.