Drawing Black Lines that Skip, Tumble & Rhyme
Reading: Sermon prep
Enjoying: Black & Gold on briar
Listening: Still Tschesnokoff... I'll put a link up soon
Here are some diamonds from T. S. Eliot. All selections from The Waste Land and Other Poems (Penguin Books, 2003).
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (79 - 98)
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald)
brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet - and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat,
and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.
And would it have worth been it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and
me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it towards some overwhelming question,
To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all" -
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: "That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all."
Now that the lilacs are in bloom
She has a bowl of lilacs in her room
And twists one in her fingers while she talks.
"Ah, my friend, you do not know, you do not know
What life is, you who hold it in your hands";
(Slowly twisting the lilac stalks)
"You let it flow from you, you let it flow,
And youth is cruel, and has no more remorse
And smiles at situations which it cannot see."
I smile, of course,
And go on drinking tea,
"Yet with these April sunsets, that somehow recall
My buried life, and Paris in the Spring,
I feel immeasurably at peace, and find the world
To be wonderful and youthful, after all."
Circumambulate her charm;
But our lot crawls between dry ribs
To keep our metaphysics warm.
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald)
brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet - and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat,
and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.
And would it have worth been it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and
me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it towards some overwhelming question,
To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all" -
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: "That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all."
Portrait Of A Lady (41 - 55)
She has a bowl of lilacs in her room
And twists one in her fingers while she talks.
"Ah, my friend, you do not know, you do not know
What life is, you who hold it in your hands";
(Slowly twisting the lilac stalks)
"You let it flow from you, you let it flow,
And youth is cruel, and has no more remorse
And smiles at situations which it cannot see."
I smile, of course,
And go on drinking tea,
"Yet with these April sunsets, that somehow recall
My buried life, and Paris in the Spring,
I feel immeasurably at peace, and find the world
To be wonderful and youthful, after all."
Whispers of Immortality (29 - )
And even the Abstract EntitiesCircumambulate her charm;
But our lot crawls between dry ribs
To keep our metaphysics warm.
Thanks for sharing that. It was fun reading it. :-)
Posted by
Dr. K Sadashiva Shetty |
5/14/2018 04:15:00 AM
That was a VERY interesting one! Seriously interesting.
Posted by
Congenital Hypothyroidism |
6/25/2018 01:49:00 AM