Little Gidding

Patrick Comerford

I

Midwinter spring is its own season

Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown,

Suspended in time, between pole and tropic.

When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire,

The brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditches,

In windless cold that is the heart's heat,

Reflecting in a watery mirror

A glare that is blindness in the early afternoon.

And glow more intense than blaze of branch, or brazier,

Stirs the dumb spirit: no wind, but pentecostal fire

In the dark time of the year. Between melting and freezing

The soul's sap quivers. There is no earth smell

Or smell of living thing. This is the spring time

But not in time's covenant. Now the hedgerow

Is blanched for an hour with transitory blossom

Of snow, a bloom more sudden

Than that of summer, neither budding nor fading,

Not in the scheme of generation.

Where is the summer, the unimaginable Zero summer?

If you came this way,

Taking the route you would be likely to take

From the place you would be likely to come from,

If you came this way in may time, you would find the hedges

White again, in May, with voluptuary sweetness.

It would be the same at the end of the journey,

If you came at night like a broken king,

If you came by day not knowing what you came for,

It would be the same, when you leave the rough road

And turn behind the pig-sty to the dull facade

And the tombstone. And what you thought you came for

Is only a shell, a husk of meaning

From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled

If at all. Either you had no purpose

Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured

And is altered in fulfilment. There are other places

Which also are the world's end, some at the sea jaws,

Or over a dark lake, in a desert or a city-

But this is the nearest, in place and time,

Now and in England.

If you came this way,

Taking any route, starting from anywhere,

At any time or at any season,

It would always be the same: you would have to put off

Sense and notion. You are not here to verify,

Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity

Or carry report. You are here to kneel

Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more

Than an order of words, the conscious occupation

Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.

And what the dead had no speech for, when living,

They can tell you, being dead: the communication

Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.

Here, the intersection of the timeless moment

Is England and nowhere. Never and always.

II

Ash on an old man's sleeve

Is all the ash the burnt roses leave.

Dust in the air suspended

Marks the place where a story ended.

Dust inbreathed was a house-

The walls, the wainscot and the mouse,

The death of hope and despair,

This is the death of air.

There are flood and drouth

Over the eyes and in the mouth,

Dead water and dead sand

Contending for the upper hand.

The parched eviscerate soil

Gapes at the vanity of toil,

Laughs without mirth.

This is the death of earth.

Water and fire succeed

The town, the pasture and the weed.

Water and fire deride

The sacrifice that we denied.

Water and fire shall rot

The marred foundations we forgot,

Of sanctuary and choir.

This is the death of water and fire.

In the uncertain hour before the morning

Near the ending of interminable night

At the recurrent end of the unending

After the dark dove with the flickering tongue

Had passed below the horizon of his homing

While the dead leaves still rattled on like tin

Over the asphalt where no other sound was

Between three districts whence the smoke arose

I met one walking, loitering and hurried

As if blown towards me like the metal leaves

Before the urban dawn wind unresisting.

And as I fixed upon the down-turned face

That pointed scrutiny with which we challenge

The first-met stranger in the waning dusk

I caught the sudden look of some dead master

Whom I had known, forgotten, half recalled

Both one and many; in the brown baked features

The eyes of a familiar compound ghost

Both intimate and unidentifiable.

So I assumed a double part, and cried

And heard another's voice cry: "What! are you here?"

Although we were not. I was still the same,

Knowing myself yet being someone other--

And he a face still forming; yet the words sufficed

To compel the recognition they preceded.

And so, compliant to the common wind,

Too strange to each other for misunderstanding,

In concord at this intersection time

Of meeting nowhere, no before and after,

We trod the pavement in a dead patrol.

I said: "The wonder that I feel is easy,

Yet ease is cause of wonder. Therefore speak:

I may not comprehend, may not remember."

And he: "I am not eager to rehearse

My thoughts and theory which you have forgotten.

These things have served their purpose: let them be.

So with your own, and pray they be forgiven

By others, as I pray you to forgive

Both bad and good. Last season's fruit is eaten

And the fullfed beast shall kick the empty pail.

For last year's words belong to last year's language

And next year's words await another voice.

But, as the passage now presents no hindrance

To the spirit unappeased and peregrine

Between two worlds become much like each other,

So I find words I never thought to speak

In streets I never thought I should revisit

When I left my body on a distant shore.

Since our concern was speech, and speech impelled us

To purify the dialect of the tribe

And urge the mind to aftersight and foresight,

Let me disclose the gifts reserved for age

To set a crown upon your lifetime's effort.

First, the cold fricton of expiring sense

Without enchantment, offering no promise

But bitter tastelessness of shadow fruit

As body and sould begin to fall asunder.

Second, the conscious impotence of rage

At human folly, and the laceration

Of laughter at what ceases to amuse.

And last, the rending pain of re-enactment

Of all that you have done, and been; the shame

Of things ill done and done to others' harm

Which once you took for exercise of virtue.

Then fools' approval stings, and honour stains.

From wrong to wrong the exasperated spirit

Proceeds, unless restored by that refining fire

Where you must move in measure, like a dancer."

The day was breaking. In the disfigured street

He left me, with a kind of valediction,

And faded on the blowing of the horn.

III

There are three conditions which often look alike

Yet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow:

Attachment to self and to things and to persons, detachment

From self and from things and from persons; and, 

growing between them, indifference

Which resembles the others as death resembles life,

Being between two lives - unflowering, between

The live and the dead nettle. This is the use of memory:

For liberation - not less of love but expanding

Of love beyond desire, and so liberation

From the future as well as the past. Thus, love of a country

Begins as an attachment to our own field of action

And comes to find that action of little importance

Though never indifferent. History may be servitude,

History may be freedom. See, now they vanish,

The faces and places, with the self which, as it could, loved them,

To become renewed, transfigured, in another pattern.

Sin is Behovely, but

All shall be well, and

All manner of thing shall be well.

If I think, again, of this place,

And of people, not wholly commendable,

Of not immediate kin or kindness,

But of some peculiar genius,

All touched by a common genius,

United in the strife which divided them;

If I think of a king at nightfall,

Of three men, and more, on the scaffold

And a few who died forgotten

In other places, here and abroad,

And of one who died blind and quiet,

Why should we celebrate

These dead men more than the dying?

It is not to ring the bell backward

Nor is it an incantation

To summon the spectre of a Rose.

We cannot revive old factions

We cannot restore old policies

Or follow an antique drum.

These men, and those who opposed them

And those whom they opposed

Accept the constitution of silence

And are folded in a single party.

Whatever we inherit from the fortunate

We have taken from the defeated

What they had to leave us - a symbol:

A symbol perfected in death.

And all shall be well and

All manner of thing shall be well

By the purification of the motive

In the ground of our beseeching.

IV

The dove descending breaks the air

With flame of incandescent terror

Of which the tongues declare

The one dischage from sin and error.

The only hope, or else despair

Lies in the choice of pyre of pyre-

To be redeemed from fire by fire.

Who then devised the torment? Love.

Love is the unfamiliar Name

Behind the hands that wove

The intolerable shirt of flame

Which human power cannot remove.

We only live, only suspire

Consumed by either fire or fire.

V

What we call the beginning is often the end

And to make and end is to make a beginning.

The end is where we start from. And every phrase

And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,

Taking its place to support the others,

The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,

An easy commerce of the old and the new,

The common word exact without vulgarity,

The formal word precise but not pedantic,

The complete consort dancing together)

Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,

Every poem an epitaph. And any action

Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat

Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.

We die with the dying:

See, they depart, and we go with them.

We are born with the dead:

See, they return, and bring us with them.

The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree

Are of equal duration. A people without history

Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern

Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails

On a winter's afternoon, in a secluded chapel

History is now and England.

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

Through the unknown, unremembered gate

When the last of earth left to discover

Is that which was the beginning;

At the source of the longest river

The voice of the hidden waterfall

And the children in the apple-tree

Not known, because not looked for

But heard, half-heard, in the stillness

Between two waves of the sea.

Quick now, here, now, always--

A condition of complete simplicity

(Costing not less than everything)

And all shall be well and

All manner of thing shall be well

When the tongues of flames are in-folded

Into the crowned knot of fire

And the fire and the rose are one.

T. S. Eliot

in, The Little Gidding

The last of T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets

Little Gidding is the fourth and final poem of T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets, a series of poems that discuss time, perspective, humanity, and salvation. 
It was first published in September 1942 after being delayed for over a year because of the air-raids on Great Britain during World War II and Eliot's declining health.
The title refers to a small Anglican community in Huntingdonshire, established by Nicholas Ferrar in the 17th century and scattered during the English Civil War.
The poem uses the combined image of fire and Pentecostal fire to emphasise the need for purification and purgation. According to the poet, humanity's flawed understanding of life and turning away from God leads to a cycle of warfare, but this can be overcome by recognising the lessons of the past.
Within the poem, the narrator meets a ghost that is a combination of various poets and literary figures. Little Gidding focuses on the unity of past, present, and future, and claims that understanding this unity is necessary for salvation.

OS HOMENS OCOS

 

Renato Petean Marino

Nós somos os homens ocos

Os homens empalhados

Uns nos outros amparados

O elmo cheio de nada. Ai de nós!

Nossas vozes dissecadas,

Quando juntos sussurramos,

São quietas e inexpressas

Como o vento na relva seca

Ou pés de ratos sobre cacos

Em nossa adega evaporada

Forma sem forma, sombra sem cor

Força paralisada, gesto sem vigor;

Aqueles que atravessaram

De olhos retos, para o outro reino da morte

Nos recordam - se o fazem - não como violentas

Almas danadas, mas apenas

Como os homens ocos

Os homens empalhados.

II

Os olhos que temo encontrar em sonhos

No reino de sonho da morte

Estes não aparecem:

Lá, os olhos são como a lâmina

Do sol nos ossos de uma coluna

Lá, uma árvore brande os ramos

E as vozes estão no frêmito

Do vento que está cantando

Mais distantes e solenes

Que uma estrela agonizante.

Que eu demais não me aproxime

Do reino de sonho da morte

Que eu possa trajar ainda

Esses tácitos disfarces

Pele de rato, plumas de corvo, estacas cruzadas

E comportar-me num campo

Como o vento se comporta

Nem mais um passo

- Não este encontro derradeiro

No reino crepuscular

III

Esta é a terra morta

Esta é a terra do cacto

Aqui as imagens de pedra

Estão eretas, aqui recebem elas

A súplica da mão de um morto

Sob o lampejo de uma estrela agonizante.

E nisto consiste

O outro reino da morte:

Despertando sozinhos

À hora em que estamos

Trêmulos de ternura

Os lábios que beijariam

Rezam as pedras quebradas.

IV

Os olhos não estão aqui

Aqui os olhos não brilham

Neste vale de estrelas tíbias

Neste vale desvalido

Esta mandíbula em ruínas de nossos reinos perdidos

Neste último sítio de encontros

Juntos tateamos

Todos à fala esquivos

Reunidos na praia do túrgido rio

Sem nada ver, a não ser

Que os olhos reapareçam

Como a estrela perpétua

Rosa multifoliada

Do reino em sombras da morte

A única esperança

De homens vazios.

V

Aqui rondamos a figueira-brava

Figueira-brava figueira-brava

Aqui rondamos a figueira-brava

Às cinco em ponto da madrugada

Entre a ideia

E a realidade

Entre o movimento

E a ação

Tomba a Sombra

Porque Teu é o Reino

Entre a concepção

E a criação

Entre a emoção

E a reação

Tomba a Sombra

A vida é muito longa

Entre o desejo

E o espasmo

Entre a potência

E a existência

Entre a essência

E a descendência

Tomba a Sombra

Porque Teu é o Reino

Porque Teu é

A vida é

Porque Teu é o

Assim expira o mundo

Assim expira o mundo

Assim expira o mundo

Não com uma explosão, mas com um suspiro.

T. S. Eliot

The Waste Land

 

Konrad Bak

The Waste Land
BY T. S. ELIOT



            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
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,
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 arch-duke’s,
My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
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,
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,
(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.
                      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
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,
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.

  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!
“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?
“Oh 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
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
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 carvéd 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
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
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?”
                           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
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—
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.
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.
(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
Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May. Goonight.
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.
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;
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
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
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
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
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—
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;
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,
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 smoothes 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
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
               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
               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
                                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?”

“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
O Lord Thou pluckest

burning


              IV. Death by Water

Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss.
                                   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.
                                   Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.


              V. What the Thunder Said

  After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and palace 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

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
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
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 mudcracked houses
                                      If there were water
   And no rock
   If there were rock
   And also water
   And water
   A spring
   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
   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
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?

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
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
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
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
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.
Only a cock stood on the rooftree
Co co rico co co rico
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain

Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
Waited for rain, while the black clouds
Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
The jungle crouched, humped in silence.
Then spoke the thunder
DA
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
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
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, aethereal rumours
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
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?
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down
Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam uti chelidon—O swallow swallow
Le Prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie
These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
                  Shantih     shantih     shantih

Gerontion’s

Eis-me aqui, um velho em tempo de seca,
Um jovem lê para mim, enquanto espero a chuva.
Jamais estive entre as ígneas colunas
Nem combati sob as centelhas de chuva
Nem de cutelo em punho, no salgado imerso até os joelhos,
Ferroado de moscardos, combati.
Minha casa é uma casa derruída,
E no peitoril da janela acocora-se o judeu, o dono,
Desovado em algum barzinho de Antuérpia, coberto
De pústulas em Bruxelas, remendado e descascado em Londres.
O bode tosse à noite nas altas pradarias;
Rochas, líquen, pão-dos-pássaros, ferro, bosta.
A mulher cuida da cozinha, faz chá,
Espirra ao cair da noite, cutucando as calhas rabugentas.
                                                                       E eu, um velho,
Uma cabeça oca entre os vazios do espaço.

Tomaram-se os signos por prodígios: “Queremos um signo!”
A Palavra dentro da palavra, incapaz de dizer uma palavra,
Envolta nas gazes da escuridão. Na adolescência do ano
Veio Cristo, o tigre.
Em maio corrupto, cornisolo e castanha, noz das
faias-da-judéia,
A serem comidas, bebidas, partilhadas
Entre sussurros; pelo Senhor Silvero
Com suas mãos obsequiosas e que, em Limoges,
No quarto ao lado caminhou a noite inteira;
Por Hakagawa, a vergar-se reverente entre os Ticianos;
Por Madame de Tornquist, a remover os castiçais
No quarto escuro, por Fraülein von Kulp,
A mão sobre a porta, que no vestíbulo se voltou.
Navetas ociosas
Tecem o vento. Não tenho fantasmas,
Um velho numa casa onde sibila a ventania
Ao pé desse cômoro esculpido pelas brisas.

Após tanto saber, que perdão? Suponha agora
Que a história engendra muitos e ardilosos labirintos,
estratégicos
Corredores e saídas, que ela seduz com sussurrantes ambições,
Aliciando-nos com vaidades. Suponha agora
Que ela somente algo nos dá enquanto estamos distraídos
E, ao fazê-lo, com tal balbúrdia e controvérsia o oferta
Que a oferenda esfaima o esfomeado. E dá tarde demais
Aquilo em que já não confias, se é que nisto ainda confiavas,
Uma recordação apenas, uma paixão revisitada. E dá cedo
demais
A frágeis mãos. O que pensado foi pode ser dispensado
Até que a rejeição faça medrar o medo. Suponha
Que nem medo nem audácia aqui nos salvem. Nosso heroísmo
Apadrinha vícios postiços. Nossos cínicos delitos
Impõem-nos altas virtudes. Estas lágrimas germinam
De uma árvore em que a ira frutifica.

O tigre salta no ano novo. E nos devora. Enfim suponha
Que a nenhuma conclusão chegamos, pois que deixei
Enrijecer meu corpo numa casa de aluguel. Enfim suponha
Que não dei à toa esse espetáculo
E nem o fiz por nenhuma instigação
De demônios ancestrais. Quanto a isto,
É com franqueza o que te vou dizer.
Eu, que perto de teu coração estive, daí fui apartado,
Perdendo a beleza no terror, o terror na inquisição.
Perdi minha paixão: por que deveria preservá-la
Se tudo o que se guarda acaba adulterado?
Perdi visão, olfato, gosto, tato e audição:
Como agora utilizá-los para de ti me aproximar?

Essas e milhares de outras ponderações
Distendem-lhe os lucros do enregelado delírio,
Excitam-lhe a franja das mucosas, quando os sentidos esfriam;
Com picantes temperos, multiplicam-lhe espetáculos
Numa profusão de espelhos. Que irá fazer a aranha?
Interromper o seu bordado? O gorgulho
Tardará? De Bailhache, Fresca, Madame Cammel, arrastados
Para além da órbita da trêmula Ursa
Num vórtice de espedaçados átomos. A gaivota contra o vento
Nos tempestuosos estreitos da Belle Isle,
Ou em círculos vagando sobre o Horn,
Brancas plumas sobre a neve, o Golfo clama,
E um velho arremessado por alísios
A um canto sonolento.
                                                          Inquilinos da morada,
Pensamentos de um cérebro seco numa estação dessecada.




T.S. Eliot

East Coker

Em meu princípio está meu fim. Umas após as outras

As casas se levantam e tombam, desmoronam, são ampliadas,

Removidas, destruídas, restauradas, ou em seu lugar

Irrompe um campo aberto, uma usina, um atalho.

Velhas pedras para novas construções, velhos lenhos para novas chamas,

Velhas chamas em cinzas convertidas, e cinzas sobre a terra semeadas,

Terra agora feita carne, pele e fezes,

Ossos de homens e bestas, trigais e folhas.

As casas vivem e morrem: há um tempo para construir

E um tempo para viver e conceber

E um tempo para o vento estilhaçar as trêmulas vidraças

E sacudir o lambril onde vagueia o rato silvestre

E sacudir as tapeçarias em farrapos tecidas com a silente legenda.

Em meu princípio está meu fim. Agora a luz declina

Sobre o campo aberto, abandonando a recôndita vereda

Cerrada pelos ramos, sombra na tarde,

Ali, onde te encolher junto ao barranco enquanto passa um caminhão,

E a recôndita vereda insiste

Rumo à aldeia, ao aquecimento elétrico

Hipnotizada. Na tépida neblina, a luz abafada

É absorvida, irrefratada, pela rocha grisalha.

As dálias dormem no silêncio vazio.

Aguarda a coruja prematura.

T.S. Eliot

Burnt Norton (de “Quatro quartetos, nº 5)

As palavras se movem, a música se move

Apenas no tempo; mas só o que vive

Pode morrer. As palavras, após a fala, alcançam

o silêncio. Apenas pelo modelo, pela forma,

As palavras ou a música podem alcançar

O repouso, como um vaso chinês que ainda se move

Perpetuamente em seu repouso.

Não o repouso do violino, enquanto a nota perdura,

Não apenas isto, mas a coexistência,

Ou seja, que o fim precede o princípio,

E que o fim e o princípio sempre estiveram lá

Antes do princípio e depois do fim.

E tudo é sempre agora. As palavras se distendem,

estalam e muita vez se quebram, sob a carga,

Sob a tensão, tropeçam, escorregam, perecem,

Apodrecem com a imprecisão, não querem manter-se

[ no lugar,

Não querem ficar quietas. Vozes estridentes,

Irritadas, zombeteiras, ou apenas tagarelas,

Sem cessar as acuam. A Palavra no deserto

É mais atacada pelas vozes da tentação,

A sombra soluçante da funérea dança,

O clamoroso lamento da quimera inconsolada.

T.S. Eliot

Burnt Norton (de “Quatro quartetos”, nº 3)

Aqui é um lugar de desamor

Tempo de antes e tempo de após

Numa luz mortiça: nem a luz do dia

Que reveste formas de lúcida quietude

Transfigurando sombras em beleza transitória

E cuja lenta rotação sugere permanência

Nem a escuridão que purifica a alma

Esvaziando o sensual com privação

Purgando de afeto o temporal.

Nem plenitude nem vazio. Um bruxuleio apenas

Sobre faces tensas repuxadas pelo tempo

Distraídas da distração pela distração

Cheias de fantasmagorias e ermas de sentido

Túmida apatia sem concentração

Homens e pedaços de papel rodopiados pelo vento frio

Que sopra antes e depois do tempo, vento

Fora e dentro de pulmões enfermos

Tempo de antes e tempo de após.

Eructação de almas doentias

No ar estiolado, miasmas

Carregados pelo vento que varre as lúgubres colinas de Londres,

Hampstead e Clerkenwell, Campden e Putney,

Highgate, Primrose e Ludgate. Não aqui

Não aqui a escuridão, neste mundo de gorjeios.

T.S. Eliot

Burnt Norton (de “Quatro quartetos”, nº 1)

Embora a razão seja comum a todos, cada

um procede como se tivesse um pensamento próprio.

O caminho que sobe e o caminho que desce

são um único e mesmo.

– Heráclito

O tempo presente e o tempo passado

Estão ambos talvez presentes no tempo futuro,

E o tempo futuro contido no tempo passado.

Se todo o tempo é eternamente presente

Todo o tempo é irredimível.

O que podia ter sido é uma abstracção

Permanecendo possibilidade perpétua

Apenas num mundo de especulação.

O que podia ter sido e o que foi

Tendem para um só fim, que é sempre presente.

Ecoam passos na memória

Ao longo do corredor que não seguimos

Em direcção à porta que nuca abrimos.

(...)

Vai, vai, vai, disse a ave: o género humano

Não pode suportar muita realidade.

O tempo passado e o tempo futuro

O que podia ter sido e o que foi

Tendem para um só fim, que é sempre presente.

T.S.Eliot

O Rei das Espadas

III

Três condições existem que amiúde iguais parecem

Embora difiram por completo, na mesma sebe florescem:

Apego a si próprio e das coisas e das pessoas; 

e, entre ambas germinando, indiferença

Que às outras se assemelha tal a morte se assemelha à vida

E que entre duas vidas se enraíza – enflorescida, entre

A urtiga viva e a morta urtiga. Esta é a função da memória:

Libertação – não menos amor, mas expansão

De amor para além do desejo, como também libertação

Do passado e do futuro. Assim, o amor é um país

Começa como apego à nossa própria esfera de ação

E acaba por jugar que tal ação seja de pouca importância

Conquanto nunca indiferente. A História pode ser escravidão,

A História pode ser liberdade. Vê, tudo agora se dissolve,

As faces e os lugares, com o eu que, tal como pôde, os amou

– Para se renovarem, transfigurados, em outro modelo.

O Pecado é Inelutável,

Mas tudo irá bem e toda

Sorte de coisa irá bem.

Se ainda me lembro desta terra,

E desta gente, não de todo elogiáveis,

Sem parentesco nem bondade próximos,

Exceto alguns de gênio singular,

Todos marcados por um só gênio comum,

Unidos na discórdia que os sangrava;

Se me lembro de um rei à noite vindo,

De três homens, ou mais, sobre o patíbulo

E de muitos que morreram deslembrados

Em outros lugares, aqui e no estrangeiro,

E daquele que morreu cego e tranquilo,

Por que haveríamos então de celebrar

A estes mortos mais que aos moribundos?

Não que se trate aqui de exorcizar

O som de um tímpano retrospectivo

Como tampouco de sortilégio

Para invocar o espectro de uma Rosa.

Não podemos reviver velhas tendências

Não podemos restauras velhas políticas

Ou dar ouvidos a um tambor antigo.

Estes homens, como os que a eles se opuseram,

E todos aos quais se opuseram aqueles,

Aceitam a constituição do silêncio

E se congregam num partido único.

Tudo quanto herdamos dos afortunados

Tomado foi por nós aos derrotados

Seu único legado – um símbolo:

Um símbolo de morte temperado.

E tudo irá bem e toda sorte de coisa irá bem

Pela purificação do impulso,

Nas raízes de nossa súplica.

(...)

V

O que chamamos de princípio é quase sempre o fim

E alcançar um fim é alcançar um princípio.

Fim é o lugar de onde partimos. E cada frase

Ou sentença de rigor (onde cada palavra se ajusta,

Assumindo seu posto para suportar as demais,

A palavra sem pompa ou timidez,

Um natural intercâmbio do antigo e do novo,

A palavra de cada dia, correta e sem vulgaridade,

A palavra exata e formal, mas não pedante,

O completo consórcio de um bailado simultâneo)

Cada frase e cada sentença são um fim e um princípio,

Cada poema um epitáfio. E qualquer ação

É um passo rumo ao todo, ao fogo, a uma descida à garganta do mar

Ou à pedra indecifrável – e daí é que partimos.

Morremos com os agonizantes:

Vê, eles nos deixaram e com eles vamos nós.

Nascemos com os mortos:

Vê, eles retornam, e consigo nos trazem.

O momento da rosa e o momento do teixo

Igual duração possuem. Um povo sem História

Não está redimido do tempo, pois a História é o modelo

Dos momentos sem tempo. Assim, enquanto a luz se extingue

Num tarde de inverno, numa capela reclusa

A História é agora e Inglaterra.

Com o impulso desde Amor e a voz deste Chamado

Não cessaremos nunca de explorar

E o fim de toda nossa exploração

Será chegar ao ponto de partida

E o lugar reconhecer ainda

Como da vez primeira que o vimos.

Pela desconhecida, relembrada porta

Quando o último palmo de terra

Deixado a nós por descobrir

Aquilo for que era o princípio.

Nas vertentes do mais longo rio

A voz da cascata escondida

E as crianças na macieira

Não percebidas, porque não buscadas

Mas ouvidas, semi-ouvidas, na quietude

Entre duas ondas do mar.

Depressa agora, aqui, agora, sempre

– Uma condição de absoluta simplicidade

(Cujo custo é nada menos que tudo)

E tudo irá bem e toda

Sorte de coisa irá bem

Quando as línguas de chama estiveram

Enrodilhadas no coroado nó de fogo

E o fogo e a rosa se tornarem um.

T. S. Eliot