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. |
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