The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909-1950 Read online

  Are quiet and meaningless

  As wind in dry grass

  Or rats’ feet over broken glass

  In our dry cellar

  Shape without form, shade without colour,

  Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

  Those who have crossed

  With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom

  Remember us — if at all — not as lost

  Violent souls, but only

  As the hollow men

  The stuffed men.

  II

  Eyes I dare not meet in dreams

  In death’s dream kingdom

  These do not appear:

  There, the eyes are

  Sunlight on a broken column

  There, is a tree swinging

  And voices are

  In the wind’s singing

  More distant and more solemn

  Than a fading star.

  Let me be no nearer

  In death’s dream kingdom

  Let me also wear

  Such deliberate disguises

  Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves

  In a field

  Behaving as the wind behaves

  No nearer —

  Not that final meeting

  In the twilight kingdom

  III

  This is the dead land

  This is cactus land

  Here the stone images

  Are raised, here they receive

  The supplication of a dead man’s hand

  Under the twinkle of a fading star.

  Is it like this

  In death’s other kingdom

  Waking alone

  At the hour when we are

  Trembling with tenderness

  Lips that would kiss

  Form prayers to broken stone.

  IV

  The eyes are not here

  There are no eyes here

  In this valley of dying stars

  In this hollow valley

  This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

  In this last of meeting places

  We grope together

  And avoid speech

  Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

  Sightless, unless

  The eyes reappear

  As the perpetual star

  Multifoliate rose

  Of death’s twilight kingdom

  The hope only

  Of empty men.

  V

  Here we go round the prickly pear

  Prickly pear prickly pear

  Here we go round the prickly pear

  At five o’clock in the morning.

  Between the idea

  And the reality

  Between the motion

  And the act

  Falls the Shadow

  For Thine is the Kingdom

  Between the conception

  And the creation

  Between the emotion

  And the response

  Falls the Shadow

  Life is very long

  Between the desire

  And the spasm

  Between the potency

  And the existence

  Between the essence

  And the descent

  Falls the Shadow

  For Thine is the Kingdom

  For Thine is

  Life is

  For Thine is the

  This is the way the world ends

  This is the way the world ends

  This is the way the world ends

  Not with a bang but a whimper.

  ASH-WEDNESDAY

  1930

  I

  Because I do not hope to turn again

  Because I do not hope

  Because I do not hope to turn

  Desiring this man’s gift and that man’s scope

  I no longer strive to strive towards such things

  (Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?)

  Why should I mourn

  The vanished power of the usual reign?

  Because I do not hope to know again

  The infirm glory of the positive hour

  Because I do not think

  Because I know I shall not know

  The one veritable transitory power

  Because I cannot drink

  There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again

  Because I know that time is always time

  And place is always and only place

  And what is actual is actual only for one time

  And only for one place

  I rejoice that things are as they are and

  I renounce the blessèd face

  And renounce the voice

  Because I cannot hope to turn again

  Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something

  Upon which to rejoice

  And pray to God to have mercy upon us

  And I pray that I may forget

  These matters that with myself I too much discuss

  Too much explain

  Because I do not hope to turn again

  Let these words answer

  For what is done, not to be done again

  May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

  Because these wings are no longer wings to fly

  But merely vans to beat the air

  The air which is now thoroughly small and dry

  Smaller and dryer than the will

  Teach us to care and not to care

  Teach us to sit still.

  Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death

  Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

  II

  Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree

  In the cool of the day, having fed to satiety

  On my legs my heart my liver and that which had been contained

  In the hollow round of my skull. And God said

  Shall these bones live? shall these

  Bones live? And that which had been contained

  In the bones (which were already dry) said chirping:

  Because of the goodness of this Lady

  And because of her loveliness, and because

  She honours the Virgin in meditation,

  We shine with brightness. And I who am here dissembled

  Proffer my deeds to oblivion, and my love

  To the posterity of the desert and the fruit of the gourd.

  It is this which recovers

  My guts the strings of my eyes and the indigestible portions

  Which the leopards reject. The Lady is withdrawn

  In a white gown, to contemplation, in a white gown.

  Let the whiteness of bones atone to forgetfulness.

  There is no life in them. As I am forgotten

  And would be forgotten, so I would forget

  Thus devoted, concentrated in purpose. And God said

  Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only

  The wind will listen. And the bones sang chirping

  With the burden of the grasshopper, saying

  Lady of silences

  Calm and distressed

  Torn and most whole

  Rose of memory

  Rose of forgetfulness

  Exhausted and life-giving

  Worried reposeful

  The single Rose

  Is now the Garden

  Where all loves end

  Terminate torment

  Of love unsatisfied

  The greater torment

  Of love satisfied

  End of the endless

  Journey to no end

  Conclusion of all that

  Is inconclusible

  Speech without word and

  Word of no speech

  Grace to the Mother

  For the Garden

  Where all love ends.

  Under a juniper-tree the bones sang, scattered and shining

  We are glad to be scattered, we did little go
od to each other,

  Under a tree in the cool of the day, with the blessing of sand,

  Forgetting themselves and each other, united

  In the quiet of the desert. This is the land which ye

  Shall divide by lot. And neither division nor unity

  Matters. This is the land. We have our inheritance.

  III

  At the first turning of the second stair

  I turned and saw below

  The same shape twisted on the banister

  Under the vapour in the fetid air

  Struggling with the devil of the stairs who wears

  The deceitful face of hope and of despair.

  At the second turning of the second stair

  I left them twisting, turning below;

  There were no more faces and the stair was dark,

  Damp, jaggèd, like an old man’s mouth drivelling, beyond repair,

  Or the toothed gullet of an agèd shark.

  At the first turning of the third stair

  Was a slotted window bellied like the fig’s fruit

  And beyond the hawthorn blossom and a pasture scene

  The broadbacked figure drest in blue and green

  Enchanted the maytime with an antique flute.

  Blown hair is sweet, brown hair over the mouth blown,

  Lilac and brown hair;

  Distraction, music of the flute, stops and steps of the mind over the third stair,

  Fading, fading; strength beyond hope and despair

  Climbing the third stair.

  Lord, I am not worthy

  Lord, I am not worthy

  but speak the word only.

  IV

  Who walked between the violet and the violet

  Who walked between

  The various ranks of varied green

  Going in white and blue, in Mary’s colour,

  Talking of trivial things

  In ignorance and in knowledge of eternal dolour

  Who moved among the others as they walked,

  Who then made strong the fountains and made fresh the springs

  Made cool the dry rock and made firm the sand

  In blue of larkspur, blue of Mary’s colour,

  Sovegna vos

  Here are the years that walk between, bearing

  Away the fiddles and the flutes, restoring

  One who moves in the time between sleep and waking, wearing

  White light folded, sheathed about her, folded.

  The new years walk, restoring

  Through a bright cloud of tears, the years, restoring

  With a new verse the ancient rhyme. Redeem

  The time. Redeem

  The unread vision in the higher dream

  While jewelled unicorns draw by the gilded hearse.

  The silent sister veiled in white and blue

  Between the yews, behind the garden god,

  Whose flute is breathless, bent her head and signed but spoke no word

  But the fountain sprang up and the bird sang down

  Redeem the time, redeem the dream

  The token of the word unheard, unspoken

  Till the wind shake a thousand whispers from the yew

  And after this our exile

  V

  If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent

  If the unheard, unspoken

  Word is unspoken, unheard;

  Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,

  The Word without a word, the Word within

  The world and for the world;

  And the light shone in darkness and

  Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled

  About the centre of the silent Word.

  O my people, what have I done unto thee.

  Where shall the word be found, where will the word

  Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence

  Not on the sea or on the islands, not

  On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land,

  For those who walk in darkness

  Both in the day time and in the night time

  The right time and the right place are not here

  No place of grace for those who avoid the face

  No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the voice

  Will the veiled sister pray for

  Those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and oppose thee,

  Those who are torn on the horn between season and season, time and time, between

  Hour and hour, word and word, power and power, those who wait

  In darkness? Will the veiled sister pray

  For children at the gate

  Who will not go away and cannot pray:

  Pray for those who chose and oppose

  O my people, what have I done unto thee.

  Will the veiled sister between the slender

  Yew trees pray for those who offend her

  And are terrified and cannot surrender

  And affirm before the world and deny between the rocks

  In the last desert between the last blue rocks

  The desert in the garden the garden in the desert

  Of drouth, spitting from the mouth the withered apple-seed.

  O my people.

  VI

  Although I do not hope to turn again

  Although I do not hope

  Although I do not hope to turn

  Wavering between the profit and the loss

  In this brief transit where the dreams cross

  The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying

  (Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things

  From the wide window towards the granite shore

  The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying

  Unbroken wings

  And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices