310
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
[III] 200
And on her daughter
315
They wash their feet in soda water
Et O ces voix d’enfants, chantant dans la coupole! [end of leaf]
Twit twit twit twit twit twit twit
Tereu tereu
[III] 205
So rudely forc’d.
320
Ter
Unreal City, I have seen and see
Under the brown fog of your winter noon
Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant,
[Commentary I 648–58 · Textual History II 387–91]
[III] 210
Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants
325
(C.i.f. London: documents at sight),
Who asked me, in abominable French,
To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel,
And perhaps a weekend at the Metropole.
Twit twit twit
330
Jug jug jug jug jug jug
Tereu
O swallow swallow
Ter
London, the swarming life you kill and breed,
335
Huddled between the concrete and the sky,
Responsive to the momentary need,
Vibrates unconscious to its formal destiny,
Knowing neither how to think, nor how to feel,
But lives in the awareness of the observing eye.
340
London, your people is bound upon the wheel!
Phantasmal gnomes, burrowing in brick and stone and steel!
Some minds, aberrant from the normal equipoise
(London, your people is bound upon the wheel!)
Record the motions of these pavement toys
345
And trace the cryptogram that may be curled
Within these faint perceptions of the noise
Of the movement, and the lights!
Not here, O Ademantus, but in another world.
[III] 215
At the violet hour, the hour when eyes and back and hand
350
Turn upward from the desk, the human engine waits—
Like a taxi throbbing waiting at a stand—
To spring to pleasure through the horn or ivory gates,
I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see
335 [III] 220
At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives
Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea, [end of leaf]
[Commentary I 658–63 · Textual History II 391–93]
The typist home at teatime, who begins
To clear away her broken breakfast, lights
Her stove, and lays out squalid food in tins,
360
Prepares the room and sets the room to rights.
Out of the window perilously spread
[III] 225
Her drying combinations meet the sun’s last rays,
And on the divan piled, (at night her bed),
Are stockings, dirty camisoles, and stays.
365
A bright kimono wraps her as she sprawls
In nerveless torpor on the window seat;
A touch of art is given by the false
Japanese print, purchased in Oxford Street.
I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs,
370
Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest,
Knowing the manner of these crawling bugs,
[III] 230
I too awaited the expected guest.
A youth of twentyone, spotted about the face,
One of those simple loiterers whom we say
375
We may have seen in any public place
At almost any hour of night or day.
Pride has not fired him with ambitious rage,
His hair is thick with grease, and thick with scurf,
Perhaps his inclinations touch the stage—
380
Not sharp enough to associate with the turf.
He, the young man carbuncular, will stare
Boldly about, in “London’s one cafe”,
And he will tell her, with a casual air,
Grandly, “I have been with Nevinson today”.
>
[Commentary I 663–66 · Textual History II 393–94]
385
Perhaps a cheap house agent’s clerk, who flits
Daily, from flat to flat, with one bold stare;
One of the low on whom assurance sits
He munches with the same persistent stare,
390
He knows his way with women and that’s that!
Impertinently tilting back his chair
And dropping cigarette ash on the mat.
[III] 235
The time is now propitious, as he guesses,
The meal is ended, she is bored and tired;
395
Endeavours to engage her in caresses,
Which still are unreproved, if undesired. [end of leaf]
Flushed and decided, he assaults at once,
[III] 240
Exploring hands encounter no defence;
His vanity requires no response,
400
And makes a welcome of indifference.
(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all
Enacted on this same divan or bed,
[III] 245
I who have sat by Thebes beneath the wall
And walked among the lowest of the dead.)
405
—Bestows one final patronising kiss,
And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit;
And at the corner where the stable is,
Delays only to urinate, and spit.
She turns and looks a moment in the glass,
410 [III] 250
Hardly aware of her departed lover;
Across her brain one half-formed thought may pass:
“Well now that’s done, and I am glad it’s over”.
When lovely woman stoops to folly and
She moves about her room again, alone,
415 [III] 255
She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,
And puts a record on the gramophone.
[Commentary I 666–68 · Textual History II 394–95]
[9-line space]
“This music crept by me upon the waters”
And along the Strand, and up the ghastly hill of Cannon Street,
Fading at last, behind by flying feet,
420
There where the tower was traced against the night
Of Michael Paternoster Royal, red and white. [end of leaf]
O City, City, I have heard & hear
The pleasant whining of a mandoline
[III] 260
Outside a public bar in lower Thames Street
425
And a clatter a chatter in the bar
Where fishmen lounge at noon time, there the walls
Of Magnus Martyr stood, stand, hold
[III] 265
Their joyful splendour of Corinthian white & gold [end of leaf]
The river sweats
430
Oil tar
The barges drift
With the turning tide
[III] 270
Red sails swing wide
to leeward
435
On the heavy spar.
The barges wash,
Like drifting logs,
[III] 275
Past Greenwich reach
Past the Isle of Dogs.
440
Weialala leia
Wallala leialala
[Commentary I 668–77 · Textual History II 395–96]
Elizabeth Leicester.
[III] 280
Beating oars.
The barge was formed
445
Of gilded shells,
Red and gold.
The slow swell
[III] 285
Rippled both shores
South west wind
450
Carried down stream
The peal of bells.
There are still white towers.
[III] 290
Weialala lalalala
Weialala. [end of leaf]
455
“Trams and dusty trees.
Highbury bore me. Richmond & Kew
Undid me. Beyond Richmond I raised my knees
[III] 295
Stretched on the floor of a perilous canoe”.
“My feet were at Moorgate, and my heart
460
Under my feet. After the event
He wept. He promised ‘a new start.’
I made no outcry: what shd I resent?” [end of leaf]
[III] 300
“On Margate Sands.
I can connect
465
Nothing with nothing.
The broken finger nails of dirty hands.
My people are plain people, who expect
[III] 305
nothing”.
la la
470
To Carthage then I came.
Burning burning burning burning
O Lord thou pluckest me out
[III] 310
O Lord thou pluckest
burning [end of leaf]
[Commentary I 677–81 · Textual History II 396–99]
[Interlude: Dirge. See “Uncollected Poems”.]
Part IV. Death by Water.
475
The sailor, attentive to the chart or to the sheets,
A concentrated will against the tempest and the tide,
Retains, even ashore, in public bars or streets
Something inhuman, clean and dignified.
Even the drunken ruffian who descends
480
Illicit backstreet stairs, to reappear,
For the derision of his sober friends,
Staggering, or limping with a comic gonorrhea,
From his trade with wind and sea and snow, as they
Are, he is, with “much seen and much endured,”
485
Foolish, impersonal, innocent or gay,
Liking to be shaved, combed, scented, manucured.
* * * *
“Kingfisher weather, with a light fair breeze,
Full canvas, and the eight sails drawing well.
We beat around the cape and laid our course
490
From the Dry Salvages to the eastern banks.
A porpoise snored upon the phosphorescent swell,
A triton rang the final warning bell
Astern, and the sea rolled, asleep.
Three knots, four knots, at dawn; at eight o’clock
495
And through the forenoon watch, the wind declined; [end of leaf]
Thereafter everything went wrong.
A water cask was opened, smelt of oil,
Another brackish. Then the main gaffjaws
Jammed. A spar split for nothing, bought
500
And paid for as good Norwegian pine. Fished.
[Commentary I 681–83 · Textual History II 399]
And then the garboard-strake began to leak.
The canned baked beans were only a putrid stench.
Two men came down with gleet; one cut his hand.
The crew began to murmur; when one watch
505
Was over time at dinner, justified
Extenuated thus: “Eat!” they said,
“It aint the eating what there is to eat—
“For when you got through digging out the weevils
“From every biscuit, there’s no time to eat”.
510
So this injurious race was sullen, and kicked;
Complained too of the ship. “Her sail to windward,”
Said one of influence among the rest,
“I’ll see a dead man in an iron coffin,
“With a crowbar row from here to Hell, before
515
“This vessel sail to windward.”
So the crew moaned; the sea with many voices
Moaned all about us, under a rainy moon,
While the suspended winter heaved and tugged,
Strirring foul weather under the Hyades.
520
Then came the fish at last. The northern banks
Had never known the codfish run so well. [end of leaf]
So the men pulled the nets, and laughed, and thought
Of home, and dollars, and the pleasant violin
At Marm Brown’s joint, and the girls and gin.
525
I laughed not.
For an unfamiliar gust
Laid us down. And freshened to a gale.
We lost two dories. And another night
Observed us scudding, with the trysail gone,
530
Northward, leaping beneath invisible stars
And when the lookout could no longer hear
Above the roar of waves upon the sea
The sharper note of breakers on a reef,
We knew we had passed the farthest northern islands
[Commentary I 683–84 · Textual History II 399–400]
535
So no one spoke again. We ate slept drank
Hot coffee, and kept watch, and no one dared
To look into anothers face, or speak
In the horror of the illimitable scream
Of a whole world about us. One night
540
On watch, I thought I saw in the fore cross-trees
Three women leaning forward, with white hair
Streaming behind, who sang above the wind
A song that charmed my senses, while I was
Frightened beyond fear, horrified past horror, calm,
545
(Nothing was real) for, I thought, now, when
I like, I can wake up and end the dream. [end of leaf]
—Something which we knew must be a dawn—
A different darkness, flowed above the clouds,
And dead ahead we saw, where sky and sea should meet,
550
A line, a white line, a long white line,
A wall, a barrier, towards which we drove.
My God man there’s bears on it.
Not a chance. Home and mother.
Where’s a cocktail shaker, Ben, here’s plenty of cracked ice.
555
Remember me.
And if Another knows, I know I know not,
Who only know that there is no more noise now.
* * * * *
[IV] 312
Phlebas, the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep-sea swell
560
And the profit and loss.
[IV] 315
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.
565
Gentile or Jew,
[Commentary I 684–86 · Textual History II 400–401]
[IV]
320
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.
[end of leaf]
[Interlude: “I am the Resurrection and the Life”. See “Uncollected Poems”.]
[V. What the Thunder said]
After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
570
After the agony in stony places
[V] 325
The shouting the crying
Gardens and palaces and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over the mountains
He who was living is now dead,
575
We who were living are now dying
[V] 330
With a little patience
Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding ahead among the mountains
580
Which are mountains of rock without water
[V] 335
If there were water we should stop and drink
Among the rock one cannot stop or think
The sweat is dry and the feet cannot stop
If there were only water among the rock
585
Dead mountain mouth with carious teeth that cannot spit
[V] 340
Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder and no rain
There is not even solitude in these mountains
590
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
[V] 345
From doors of mudcracked houses [end of leaf]
If there were water
[Commentary I 686–91 · Textual History II 401–403]
And no rock
If there were rock
595
And also water
And water
[V] 350
A spring
A pool among the rock
If there were the sound of water only
600
Not the cicada, and
The dry grass singing
[V] 355
But sound of water over rock
Where the hermit thrush sings in the pines
Drip-drop drop drop drop
605
But here is no water
Who is the third that walks beside you?
[V] 360
When I count, there is only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another walking beside you
610
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded