The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909-1950 Read online

  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;

  30 I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

  Frisch weht der Wind

  Der Heimat zu

  Mein Irisch Kind

  Wo weilest du?

  ‘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

  40 Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,

  Looking into the heart of light, the silence.

  Oed’ und leer das Meer.

  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,

  50 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.

  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.

  60 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.

  There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying: ‘Stetson!

  70 ‘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?

  ‘O 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!’

  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

  80 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

  90 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.

  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

  100 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.

  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

  110 Glowed into words, then would be savagely still.

  ‘My nerves are bad tonight. 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.

  ‘What is that noise?’

  The wind under the door.

  ‘What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?’

  120 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

  130 So intelligent

  ‘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 tomorrow?

  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.

  When Lil’s husband got demobbed, I said —

  140 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.

  150 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.

  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.

  160 (She’s had five already, and nearly died of young George.)

  The chemist said it would be all right, 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

  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

  170 Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May. Goonight.

  Ta ta. Goonight. Goonight.

  Good night, ladi
es, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.

  III. The Fire Sermon

  The river’s tent is broken; the last ringers 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.

  180 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.

  A rat crept softly through the vegetation

  Dragging its slimy belly on the bank

  While I was fishing in the dull canal

  190 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.

  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.

  O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter

  200 And on her daughter

  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.

  Tereu

  Unreal City

  Under the brown fog of a winter noon

  Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant

  210 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 weekend at the Metropole.

  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

  220 At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives

  Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,

  The typist home at teatime, 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,

  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 —

  230 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.

  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;

  240 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 patronising kiss,

  And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit …

  She turns and looks a moment in the glass,

  250 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 smooths her hair with automatic hand,

  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

  260 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.

  The river sweats

  Oil and tar

  The barges drift

  With the turning tide

  270 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

  Elizabeth and Leicester

  280 Beating oars

  The stern was formed

  A gilded shell

  Red and gold

  The brisk swell

  Rippled both shores

  Southwest wind

  Carried down stream

  The peal of bells

  White towers

  290 Weialala leia

  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.’

  ‘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?’

  300 ‘On Margate Sands.

  I can connect

  Nothing with nothing.

  The broken fingernails of dirty hands.

  My people humble people who expect

  Nothing.’

  la la

  To Carthage then I came

  Burning burning burning burning

  O Lord Thou pluckest me out

  310 O Lord Thou pluckest