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!' | |
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 |
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
The Waste Land, the Seriel, pt. 3
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Be kind. Rewind.