Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
W. B. YEATS
Sailing To Byzantium
I That is no country for old men. The young In one another's arms, birds in the trees ---Those dying generations---at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unaging intellect. II An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick, unless Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing For every tatter in its mortal dress, Nor is there singing school but studying Monuments of its own magnificence; And therefore I have sailed the seas and come To the holy city of Byzantium. III O sages standing in God's holy fire As in the gold mosaic of a wall, Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre, And be the singing-masters of my soul. Consume my heart away; sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It knows not what it is; and gather me Into the artifice of eternity. IV Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered gold and gold enamelling To keep a drowsy Emperor awake; Or set upon a golden bough to sing To lords and ladies of Byzantium Of what is past, or passing, or to come. The Second Coming TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of i{Spiritus Mundi} Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at laSt, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Lapis Lazuli (For Harry Clifton) I HAVE heard that hysterical women say They are sick of the palette and fiddle-bow. Of poets that are always gay, For everybody knows or else should know That if nothing drastic is done Aeroplane and Zeppelin will come out. Pitch like King Billy bomb-balls in Until the town lie bearen flat. All perform their tragic play, There struts Hamlet, there is Lear, That's Ophelia, that Cordelia; Yet they, should the last scene be there, The great stage curtain about to drop, If worthy their prominent part in the play, Do not break up their lines to weep. They know that Hamlet and Lear are gay; Gaiety transfiguring all that dread. All men have aimed at, found and lost; Black out; Heaven blazing into the head:
Tragedy wrought to its uttermost. Though Hamlet rambles and Lear rages, And all the drop-scenes drop at once Upon a hundred thousand stages, It cannot grow by an inch or an ounce. On their own feet they came, or On shipboard,' Camel-back; horse-back, ass-back, mule-back, Old civilisations put to the sword. Then they and their wisdom went to rack: No handiwork of Callimachus, Who handled marble as if it were bronze, Made draperies that seemed to rise When sea-wind swept the corner, stands; His long lamp-chimney shaped like the stem Of a slender palm, stood but a day; All things fall and are built again, And those that build them again are gay. Two Chinamen, behind them a third, Are carved in lapis lazuli, Over them flies a long-legged bird, A symbol of longevity; The third, doubtless a serving-man, Carries a musical instmment. Every discoloration of the stone, Every accidental crack or dent, Seems a water-course or an avalanche, Or lofty slope where it still snows Though doubtless plum or cherry-branch Sweetens the little half-way house Those Chinamen climb towards, and I Delight to imagine them seated there; There, on the mountain and the sky, On all the tragic scene they stare. One asks for mournful melodies; Accomplished fingers begin to play. Their eyes mid many wrinkles, their eyes, Their ancient, glittering eyes, are gay
Leda And The Swan A SUDDEN blow: the great wings beating still Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast. How can those terrified vague fingers push The feathered glory from her loosening thighs? And how can body, laid in that white rush, But feel the strange heart beating where it lies? A shudder in the loins engenders there The broken wall, the burning roof and tower And Agamemnon dead. Being so caught up, So mastered by the brute blood of the air, Did she put on his knowledge with his power Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?
Among School Children I WALK through the long schoolroom questioning; A kind old nun in a white hood replies; The children learn to cipher and to sing, To study reading-books and histories, To cut and sew, be neat in everything In the best modern way -- the children's eyes In momentary wonder stare upon A sixty-year-old smiling public man. I dream of a Ledaean body, bent Above a sinking fire. a tale that she Told of a harsh reproof, or trivial event That changed some childish day to tragedy -Told, and it seemed that our two natures blent Into a sphere from youthful sympathy, Or else, to alter Plato's parable, Into the yolk and white of the one shell. III And thinking of that fit of grief or rage I look upon one child or t'other there And wonder if she stood so at that age -For even daughters of the swan can share Something of every paddler's heritage -And had that colour upon cheek or hair, And thereupon my heart is driven wild: She stands before me as a living child. Her present image floats into the mind -Did Quattrocento finger fashion it Hollow of cheek as though it drank the wind And took a mess of shadows for its meat? And I though never of Ledaean kind Had pretty plumage once -- enough of that,
Better to smile on all that smile, and show There is a comfortable kind of old scarecrow. What youthful mother, a shape upon her lap Honey of generation had betrayed, And that must sleep, shriek, struggle to escape As recollection or the drug decide, Would think her Son, did she but see that shape With sixty or more winters on its head, A compensation for the pang of his birth, Or the uncertainty of his setting forth? Plato thought nature but a spume that plays Upon a ghostly paradigm of things; Solider Aristotle played the taws Upon the bottom of a king of kings; World-famous golden-thighed Pythagoras Fingered upon a fiddle-stick or strings What a star sang and careless Muses heard: Old clothes upon old sticks to scare a bird. VII Both nuns and mothers worship images, But thos the candles light are not as those That animate a mother's reveries, But keep a marble or a bronze repose. And yet they too break hearts -- O presences That passion, piety or affection knows, And that all heavenly glory symbolise -O self-born mockers of man's enterprise; VIII Labour is blossoming or dancing where The body is not bruised to pleasure soul. Nor beauty born out of its own despair, Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil. O chestnut-tree, great-rooted blossomer, Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole? O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, How can we know the dancer from the dance? The Magi NOW as at all times I can see in the mind's eye, In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones Appear and disappear in the blue depth of the sky With all their ancient faces like rain-beaten stones, And all their helms of Silver hovering side by side, And all their eyes still fixed, hoping to find once more, Being by Calvary's turbulence unsatisfied, The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.
T. S. ELIOT
Gerontion
Thou hast nor youth nor age But as it were an after dinner sleep Dreaming of both. Here I am, an old man in a dry month, Being read to by a boy, waiting for rain. I was neither at the hot gates Nor fought in the warm rain Nor knee deep in the salt marsh, heaving a cutlass, Bitten by flies, fought. My house is a decayed house, And the jew squats on the window sill, the owner, Spawned in some estaminet of Antwerp, Blistered in Brussels, patched and peeled in London. The goat coughs at night in the field overhead; Rocks, moss, stonecrop, iron, merds. The woman keeps the kitchen, makes tea,
Sneezes at evening, poking the peevish gutter. I an old man, A dull head among windy spaces. Signs are taken for wonders. 'We would see a sign': The word within a word, unable to speak a word, Swaddled with darkness. In the juvescence of the year Came Christ the tiger In depraved May, dogwood and chestnut, flowering Judas, To be eaten, to be divided, to be drunk Among whispers; by Mr. Silvero With caressing hands, at Limoges Who walked all night in the next room; By Hakagawa, bowing among the Titians; By Madame de Tornquist, in the dark room Shifting the candles; Fraulein von Kulp Who turned in the hall, one hand on the door. Vacant shuttles Weave the wind. I have no ghosts, An old man in a draughty house Under a windy knob. After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions, Guides us by vanities. Think now She gives when our attention is distracted And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions That the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late What's not believed in, or if still believed, In memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon Into weak hands, what's thought can be dispensed with Till the refusal propagates a fear. Think Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes. These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree. The tiger springs in the new year. Us he devours. Think at last We have not reached conclusion, when I Stiffen in a rented house. Think at last I have not made this show purposelessly And it is not by any concitation Of the backward devils. I would meet you upon this honestly. I that was near your heart was removed therefrom To lose beauty in terror, terror in inquisition.
I have lost my passion: why should I need to keep it Since what is kept must be adulterated? I have lost my sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch: How should I use it for your closer contact? These with a thousand small deliberations Protract the profit of their chilled delirium, Excite the membrane, when the sense has cooled, With pungent sauces, multiply variety In a wilderness of mirrors. What will the spider do, Suspend its operations, will the weevil Delay? De Bailhache, Fresca, Mrs. Cammel, whirled Beyond the circuit of the shuddering Bear In fractured atoms. Gull against the wind, in the windy straits Of Belle Isle, or running on the Horn, White feathers in the snow, the Gulf claims, And an old man driven by the Trades To a sleepy corner. Tenants of the house, Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season.
prices: A hard time we had of it. At the end we preferred to travel all night, Sleeping in snatches, With the voices singing in our ears, saying That this was all folly. Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley, Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation; With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness, And three trees on the low sky, And an old white horse galloped in away in the meadow. Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel, Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver, And feet kicking the empty wine-skins. But there was no imformation, and so we continued And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory. All this was a long time ago, I remember, And I would do it again, but set down This set down This: were we led all that way for Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly, We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death, But had thought they were different; this Birth was Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death. We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, With an alien people clutching their
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Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwhelming question ... Oh, do not ask, "What is it?" Let us go and make our visit. In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo. The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the windowpanes, The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the windowpanes Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening, Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains, Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys, Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, And seeing that it was a soft October night, Curled once about the house, and fell asleep. And indeed there will be time For the yellow smoke that slides along the street Rubbing its back upon the window-panes; There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; There will be time to murder and create, And time for all the works and days of hands That lift and drop a question on your plate; Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and tea. In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo. And indeed there will be time To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?" Time to turn back and descend the stair, With a bald spot in the middle of my hair-(They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!") My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin, My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin-(They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!") Do I dare Disturb the universe?
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In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. For I have known them all already, known them all-Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; I know the voices dying with a dying fall Beneath the music from a farther room. So how should I presume? And I have known the eyes already, known them all-The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase, And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall, Then how should I begin To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways? And how should I presume? And I have known the arms already, known them all-Arms that are braceleted and white and bare (But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!) Is it perfume from a dress That makes me so digress? Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl. And should I then presume? And how should I begin? ..... Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? . . . I should have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas. ..... And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully! Smoothed by long fingers, Asleep . . . tired . . . or it malingers, Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me. Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter, I am no prophet--and here's no great matter;
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I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, And in short, I was afraid. And would it have been worth it, after all, After the cups, the marmalade, the tea, Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me, Would it have been worth while, To have bitten off the matter with a smile, To have squeezed the universe into a ball To roll it towards some overwhelming question, To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead, Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"-If one, settling a pillow by her head, Should say: "That is not what I meant at all. That is not it, at all." And would it have been worth it, after all, Would it have been worth while, After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets, After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor-And this, and so much more?-It is impossible to say just what I mean! But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen: Would it have been worth while If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl, And turning toward the window, should say: "That is not it at all, That is not what I meant, at all." ..... No!I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; Am an attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two, Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, Deferential, glad to be of use, Politic, cautious, and meticulous; Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; At times, indeed, almost ridiculous-Almost, at times, the Fool. I grow old . . . I grow old . . . I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. Shall I part my hair behind?Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
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I do not think that they will sing to me. I have seen them riding seaward on the waves Combing the white hair of the waves blown back When the wind blows the water white and black. We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
Marina Quis hic locus, quae regio, quae mundi plaga? What seas what shores what grey rocks and what islands What water lapping the bow And scent of pine and the woodthrush singing through the fog What images return O my daughter. Those who sharpen the tooth of the dog, meaning Death Those who glitter with the glory of the hummingbird, meaning Death Those who sit in the sty of contentment, meaning Death Those who suffer the ecstasy of the animals, meaning Death Are become insubstantial, reduced by a wind, A breath of pine, and the woodsong fog By this grace dissolved in place What is this face, less clear and clearer The pulse in the arm, less strong and stronger Given or lent? more distant than stars and nearer than the eye Whispers and small laughter between leaves and hurrying feet Under sleep, where all the waters meet. Bowsprit cracked with ice and paint cracked with heat. I made this, I have forgotten And remember. The rigging weak and the canvas rotten Between one June and another September. Made this unknowing, half conscious, unknown, my own.
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The garboard strake leaks, the seams need caulking. This form, this face, this life Living to live in a world of time beyond me; let me Resign my life for this life, my speech for that unspoken, The awakened, lips parted, the hope, the new ships. What seas what shores what granite islands towards my timbers And woodthrush calling through the fog My daughter. W. STEVENS
Of Modern Poetry
The poem of the mind in the act of finding What will suffice. It has not always had To find: the scene was set; it repeated what Was in the script. Then the theatre was changed To something else. Its past was a souvenir. It has to be living, to learn the speech of the place. It has to face the men of the time and to meet The women of the time. It has to think about war And it has to find what will suffice. It has To construct a new stage. It has to be on that stage, And, like an insatiable actor, slowly and With meditation, speak words that in the ear, In the delicatest ear of the mind, repeat, Exactly, that which it wants to hear, at the sound Of which, an invisible audience listens, Not to the play, but to itself, expressed In an emotion as of two people, as of two Emotions becoming one. The actor is A metaphysician in the dark, twanging An instrument, twanging a wiry string that gives Sounds passing through sudden rightnesses, wholly Containing the mind, below which it cannot descend, Beyond which it has no will to rise. It must Be the finding of a satisfaction, and may Be of a man skating, a woman dancing, a woman Combing. The poem of the act of the mind.
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The water never formed to mind or voice, Like a body wholly body, fluttering Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry, That was not ours although we understood, Inhuman, of the veritable ocean. The sea was not a mask. No more was she. The song and water were not medleyed sound Even if what she sang was what she heard, Since what she sang was uttered word by word. It may be that in all her phrases stirred The grinding water and the gasping wind; But it was she and not the sea we heard. For she was the maker of the song she sang. The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea Was merely a place by which she walked to sing. Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knew It was the spirit that we sought and knew That we should ask this often as she sang. If it was only the dark voice of the sea That rose, or even colored by many waves; If it was only the outer voice of sky And cloud, of the sunken coral water-walled, However clear, it would have been deep air, The heaving speech of air, a summer sound Repeated in a summer without end And sound alone. But it was more than that, More even than her voice, and ours, among The meaningless plungings of water and the wind, Theatrical distances, bronze shadows heaped On high horizons, mountainous atmospheres Of sky and sea. It was her voice that made The sky acutest at its vanishing. She measured to the hour its solitude. She was the single artificer of the world In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea, Whatever self it had, became the self That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we, As we beheld her striding there alone, Knew that there was never a world for her Except the one she sang and, singing, made. Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know, Why, when the singing ended and we turned
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Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights, The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there, As the night descended, tilting in the air, Mastered the night and portioned out the sea, Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles, Arranging, deepening, enchanting night. Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon, The maker's rage to order words of sea Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred, And of ourselves and our origins, In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds. S. PLATH
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Of whatever angel any choose to flare Suddenly at my elbow. I only know that a rook Ordering its black feathers can so shine As to seize my senses, haul My eyelids up, and grant A brief respite from fear Of total neutrality. With luck, Trekking stubborn through this season Of fatigue, I shall Patch together a content Of sorts. Miracles occur. If you care to call those spasmodic Tricks of radiance Miracles. The wait's begun again, The long wait for the angel, For that rare, random descent.
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Blue and mystical over the face of the stars. Inside the church, the saints will be all blue, Floating on their delicate feet over cold pews, Their hands and faces stiff with holiness. The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild. And the message of the yew tree is blackness - blackness and silence." The Mirror I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions. Whatever I see I swallow immediately Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike. I am not cruel, only truthful The eye of a little god, four-cornered. Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall. It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long I think it is part of my heart. But it flickers. Faces and darkness separate us over and over. Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me, Searching my reaches for what she really is. Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon. I see her back, and reflect it faithfully. She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands. I am important to her. She comes and goes. Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness. In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.
DYLAN THOMAS
Fern Hill
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green, The night above the dingle starry, Time let me hail and climb Golden in the heydays of his eyes, And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves Trail with daisies and barley Down the rivers of the windfall light. And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home, In the sun that is young once only, Time let me play and be
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Golden in the mercy of his means, And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold, And the sabbath rang slowly In the pebbles of the holy streams. All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air And playing, lovely and watery And fire green as grass. And nightly under the simple stars As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away, All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars Flying with the ricks, and the horses Flashing into the dark. And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all Shining, it was Adam and maiden, The sky gathered again And the sun grew round that very day. So it must have been after the birth of the simple light In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm Out of the whinnying green stable On to the fields of praise. And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long, In the sun born over and over, I ran my heedless ways, My wishes raced through the house high hay And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs Before the children green and golden Follow him out of grace. Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand, In the moon that is always rising, Nor that riding to sleep I should hear him fly with the high fields And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land. Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
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Time held me green and dying Though I sang in my chains like the sea. P. LARKIN Church Going Once I am sure there's nothing going on I step inside, letting the door thud shut. Another church: matting, seats, and stone, And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff Up at the holy end; the small neat organ; And a tense, musty, unignorable silence, Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off My cycle-clips in awkward reverence, Move forward, run my hand around the font. From where I stand, the roof looks almost newCleaned or restored? Someone would know: I don't. Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce "Here endeth" much more loudly than I'd meant. The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence, Reflect the place was not worth stopping for. Yet stop I did: in fact I often do, And always end much at a loss like this, Wondering what to look for; wondering, too, When churches fall completely out of use What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep A few cathedrals chronically on show, Their parchment, plate, and pyx in locked cases, And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep. Shall we avoid them as unlucky places? Or, after dark, will dubious women come To make their children touch a particular stone; Pick simples for a cancer; or on some Advised night see walking a dead one? Power of some sort or other will go on In games, in riddles, seemingly at random; But superstition, like belief, must die, And what remains when disbelief has gone? Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky, A shape less recognizable each week,
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A purpose more obscure. I wonder who Will be the last, the very last, to seek This place for what it was; one of the crew That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were? Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique, Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh? Or will he be my representative, Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt So long and equably what since is found Only in separation - marriage, and birth, And death, and thoughts of these - for whom was built This special shell? For, though I've no idea What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth, It pleases me to stand in silence here; A serious house on serious earth it is, In whose blent air all our compulsions meet, Are recognised, and robed as destinies. And that much never can be obsolete, Since someone will forever be surprising A hunger in himself to be more serious, And gravitating with it to this ground, Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in, If only that so many dead lie round.
I Remember, I Remember
Coming up England by a different line For once, early in the cold new year, We stopped, and, watching men with number plates Sprint down the platform to familiar gates, 'Why, Coventry!' I exclaimed. "I was born here.' I leant far out, and squinnied for a sign That this was still the town that had been 'mine' So long, but found I wasn't even clear Which side was which. From where those cycle-crates Were standing, had we annually departed For all those family hols? . . . A whistle went: Things moved. I sat back, staring at my boots. 'Was that,' my friend smiled, 'where you "have your roots"?'
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No, only where my childhood was unspent, I wanted to retort, just where I started: By now I've got the whole place clearly charted. Our garden, first: where I did not invent Blinding theologies of flowers and fruits, And wasn't spoken to by an old hat. And here we have that splendid family I never ran to when I got depressed, The boys all biceps and the girls all chest, Their comic Ford, their farm where I could be 'Really myself'. I'll show you, come to that, The bracken where I never trembling sat, Determined to go through with it; where she Lay back, and 'all became a burning mist'. And, in those offices, my doggerel Was not set up in blunt ten-point, nor read By a distinguished cousin of the mayor, Who didn't call and tell my father There Before us, had we the gift to see ahead 'You look as though you wished the place in Hell,' My friend said, 'judging from your face.' 'Oh well, I suppose it's not the place's fault,' I said. 'Nothing, like something, happens anywhere.'
Annus Mirabilis Sexual intercourse began In nineteen sixty-three (which was rather late for me) Between the end of the "Chatterley" ban And the Beatles' first LP. Up to then there'd only been A sort of bargaining, A wrangle for the ring, A shame that started at sixteen And spread to everything.
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Then all at once the quarrel sank: Everyone felt the same, And every life became A brilliant breaking of the bank, A quite unlosable game. So life was never better than In nineteen sixty-three (Though just too late for me) Between the end of the "Chatterley" ban And the Beatles' first LP. Toads Why should I let the toad work Squat on my life? Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork And drive the brute off? Six days of the week it soils With its sickening poison Just for paying a few bills! That's out of proportion. Lots of folk live on their wits: Lecturers, lispers, Losers, loblolly-men, loutsThey don't end as paupers; Lots of folk live up lanes With fires in a bucket, Eat windfalls and tinned sardinesThey seem to like it. Their nippers have got bare feet, Their unspeakable wives Are skinny as whippets - and yet No one actually _starves_. Ah, were I courageous enough To shout, Stuff your pension! But I know, all too well, that's the stuff That dreams are made on: For something sufficiently toad-like Squats in me, too; Its hunkers are heavy as hard luck,
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And cold as snow, And will never allow me to blarney My way of getting The fame and the girl and the money All at one sitting. I don't say, one bodies the other One's spiritual truth; But I do say it's hard to lose either, When you have both. Toads Revisited Walking around in the park Should feel better than work: The lake, the sunshine, The grass to lie on, Blurred playground noises Beyond black-stockinged nurses Not a bad place to be. Yet it doesn't suit me. Being one of the men You meet of an afternoon: Palsied old step-takers, Hare-eyed clerks with the jitters, Waxed-fleshed out-patients Still vague from accidents, And characters in long coats Deep in the litter-baskets All dodging the toad work By being stupid or weak. Think of being them! Hearing the hours chime, Watching the bread delivered, The sun by clouds covered, The children going home; Think of being them, Turning over their failures By some bed of lobelias, Nowhere to go but indoors,
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Nor friends but empty chairs No, give me my in-tray, My loaf-haired secretary, My shall-I-keep-the-call-in-Sir: What else can I answer, When the lights come on at four At the end of another year? Give me your arm, old toad; Help me down Cemetery Road. Money Quarterly, is it, money reproaches me: 'Why do you let me lie here wastefully? I am all you never had of goods and sex, You could get them still by writing a few cheques.' So I look at others, what they do with theirs: They certainly don't keep it upstairs. By now they've a second house and car and wife: Clearly money has something to do with life - In fact, they've a lot in common, if you enquire: You can't put off being young until you retire, And however you bank your screw, the money you save Won't in the end buy you more than a shave. I listen to money singing. It's like looking down From long French windows at a provincial town, The slums, the canal, the churches ornate and mad In the evening sun. It is intensely sad. Waiting for Breakfast, While She Brushed Her Hair Waiting for breakfast, while she brushed her hair, I looked down at the empty hotel yard Once meant for coaches. Cobblestones were wet, But sent no light back to the loaded sky, Sunk as it was with mist down to the roofs. Drainpipes and fire-escape climbed up Past rooms still burning their electric light: I thought: Featureless morning, featureless night. Misjudgment: for the stones slept, and the mist Wandered absolvingly past all it touched,
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Yet hung like a stayed breath; the lights burnt on, Pin-points of undisturbed excitement; beyond the glass The colourless vial of day painlessly spilled My world back after a year, my lost lost world Like a cropping deer strayed near my path again, Bewaring the minds least clutch. Turning, I kissed her, Easily for sheer joy tipping the balance to love. But, tender visiting, Fallow as a deer or an unforced field, How would you have me? Towards your grace My promises meet and lock and race like rivers, But only when you choose. Are you jealous of her? Will you refuse to come till I have sent Her terribly away, importantly live Part invalid, part baby, and part saint? The Whitsun Weddings
BY PHILIP LARKIN 19221985
That Whitsun, I was late getting away: Not till about One-twenty on the sunlit Saturday Did my three-quarters-empty train pull out, All windows down, all cushions hot, all sense Of being in a hurry gone. We ran Behind the backs of houses, crossed a street Of blinding windscreens, smelt the fish-dock; thence The rivers level drifting breadth began, Where sky and Lincolnshire and water meet. All afternoon, through the tall heat that slept For miles inland, A slow and stopping curve southwards we kept. Wide farms went by, short-shadowed cattle, and Canals with floatings of industrial froth; A hothouse flashed uniquely: hedges dipped And rose: and now and then a smell of grass Displaced the reek of buttoned carriage-cloth Until the next town, new and nondescript, Approached with acres of dismantled cars.
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At first, I didnt notice what a noise The weddings made Each station that we stopped at: sun destroys The interest of whats happening in the shade, And down the long cool platforms whoops and skirls I took for porters larking with the mails, And went on reading. Once we started, though, We passed them, grinning and pomaded, girls In parodies of fashion, heels and veils, All posed irresolutely, watching us go, As if out on the end of an event Waving goodbye To something that survived it. Struck, I leant More promptly out next time, more curiously, And saw it all again in different terms: The fathers with broad belts under their suits And seamy foreheads; mothers loud and fat; An uncle shouting smut; and then the perms, The nylon gloves and jewellery-substitutes, The lemons, mauves, and olive-ochres that Marked off the girls unreally from the rest. Yes, from cafs And banquet-halls up yards, and bunting-dressed Coach-party annexes, the wedding-days Were coming to an end. All down the line Fresh couples climbed aboard: the rest stood round; The last confetti and advice were thrown, And, as we moved, each face seemed to define Just what it saw departing: children frowned At something dull; fathers had never known Success so huge and wholly farcical; The women shared The secret like a happy funeral; While girls, gripping their handbags tighter, stared
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At a religious wounding. Free at last, And loaded with the sum of all they saw, We hurried towards London, shuffling gouts of steam. Now fields were building-plots, and poplars cast Long shadows over major roads, and for Some fifty minutes, that in time would seem Just long enough to settle hats and say I nearly died, A dozen marriages got under way. They watched the landscape, sitting side by side An Odeon went past, a cooling tower, And someone running up to bowland none Thought of the others they would never meet Or how their lives would all contain this hour. I thought of London spread out in the sun, Its postal districts packed like squares of wheat: There we were aimed. And as we raced across Bright knots of rail Past standing Pullmans, walls of blackened moss Came close, and it was nearly done, this frail Travelling coincidence; and what it held Stood ready to be loosed with all the power That being changed can give. We slowed again, And as the tightened brakes took hold, there swelled A sense of falling, like an arrow-shower Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain.
T. GUNN TAMER AND HAWK I thought I was so tough, But gentled at your hands Cannot be quick enough To fly for you and show That when I go I go
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At your commands. Even in flight above I am no longer free: You seeled with your love, I am blind to other birds The habit of your words Has hooded me. As formerly, I wheel I hover and I twist, But only want the feel In my possessive thought, Of catcher and of caught Upon your wrist. You but half-civilize, Taming me in this way. Through having only eyes For you I fear to lose, I lose to keep, and choose Tamer as pray.
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Men manufacture both machine and soul, And use what they imperfectly control To dare a future from the taken routes. It is part solution, after all. One is not necessarily discord On Earth; or damned because, half animal, One lacks direct instinct, because one wakes Afloat on movement that divides and breaks. One joins the movement in a valueless world, Crossing it, till, both hurler and the hurled, One moves as well, always toward, toward. A minute holds them, who have come to go: The self-defined, astride the created will. They burst away; the towns they travel through Are home for neither birds nor holiness, For birds and saints complete their purposes. At worse, one is in motion; and at best, Reaching no absolute, in which to rest, One is always nearer by not keeping still.
T. HUGHES A Childish Prank Man's and woman's bodies lay without souls, Dully gaping, foolishly staring, inert On the flowers of Eden. God pondered. The problem was so great, it dragged him asleep. Crow laughed. He bit the Worm, God's only son, Into two writhing halves. He stuffed into man the tail half With the wounded end hanging out. He stuffed the head half headfirst into woman And it crept in deeper and up To peer out through her eyes Calling it's tail-half to join up quickly, quickly Because O it was painful. Man awoke being dragged across the grass. Woman awoke to see him coming. Neither knew what had happened.
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Dwell on her graciousness, dwell on her smiling, Do not forget what flowers The great boar trampled down in ivy time. Her brow was creamy as the crested wave, Her sea-blue eyes were wild But nothing promised that is not performed.
SEAMUS HEANEY Digging Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests; as snug as a gun. Under my window a clean rasping sound When the spade sinks into gravelly ground: My father, digging. I look down
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Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds Bends low, comes up twenty years away Stooping in rhythm through potato drills Where he was digging. The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft Against the inside knee was levered firmly. He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep To scatter new potatoes that we picked Loving their cool hardness in our hands. By God, the old man could handle a spade, Just like his old man. My grandfather could cut more turf in a day Than any other man on Toner's bog. Once I carried him milk in a bottle Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up To drink it, then fell to right away Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods Over his shoulder, digging down and down For the good turf. Digging. The cold smell of potato mold, the squelch and slap Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge Through living roots awaken in my head. But I've no spade to follow men like them. Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests. I'll dig with it. THE DIVINER Cut from the green hedge a forked hazel stick That he held tight by the arms of the V: Circling the terrain, hunting the pluck Of water, nervous, but professionally Unfussed. The pluck came sharp as a sting. The rod jerked with precise convulsions, Spring water suddenly broadcasting Through a green hazel its secret stations. The bystanders would ask to have a try. He handed them the rod without a word. It lay dead in their grasp till, nonchalantly,
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He gripped expectant wrists. The hazel stirred. HERCULES AND ANTAEUS Sky-born and royal, snake-choker, dung-heaver, his mind big with golden apples, his future hung with trophies, Hercules has the measure of resistance and black powers feeding off the territory. Antaeus, the mould-hugger, is weaned at last: a fall was a renewal but now he is raised up the challenger's intelligence is a spur of light, a blue prong graiping him out of his element into a dream of loss and origins - the cradling dark, the river-veins, the secret gullies of his strength, the hatching grounds of cave and souterrain, he has bequeathed it all to elegists. Balor will die and Byrthnoth and Sitting Bull. Hercules lifts his arms in a remorseless V, his triumph unassailed by the powers he has shaken and lifts and banks Antaeus high as a profiled ridge, a sleeping giant, pap for the dispossessed. UNDINE He slashed the briars, shovelled up grey slit To give me right of way in my own drains
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And I ran quick for him, cleaned out my rust. He halted, saw me finally disrobed. Running clear, with apparent unconcern. Then he walked by me. I rippled and I churned Where ditches intersected near the river Until he dug a spade deep in my flank And took me to him. I swallowed his trench Gratefully, dispersing myself for love Down in his roots, climbing his brassy grain But once he knew my welcome, I alone Could give him subtle increase and reflection. He explored me so completely, each limb Lost its cold freedom. Human, warmed to him. A. RICH
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the blue light the clear atoms of our human air. I go down. My flippers cripple me, I crawl like an insect down the ladder and there is no one to tell me when the ocean will begin. First the air is blue and then it is bluer and then green and then black I am blacking out and yet my mask is powerful it pumps my blood with power the sea is another story the sea is not a question of power I have to learn alone to turn my body without force in the deep element. And now: it is easy to forget what I came for among so many who have always lived here swaying their crenellated fans between the reefs and besides you breathe differently down here. I came to explore the wreck. The words are purposes. The words are maps. I came to see the damage that was done and the treasures that prevail. I stroke the beam of my lamp slowly along the flank of something more permanent than fish or week the thing I came for: the wreck and not the story of the wreck the thing itself and not the myth the drowned face always staring toward the sun the evidence of damage worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty the ribs of the disaster
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curving their assertion among the tentative haunters. This is the place. and I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair streams black, the merman in his armored body We circle silently about the wreck we dive into the hold. I am she: I am he whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes whose breasts still bear the stress whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies Obscurely inside barrels half-wedged and left to rot we are the half-destroyed instruments that once held to a course the water-eaten log the fouled compass We are, I am, you are by cowardice or courage the one who find our way back to the scene carrying a knife, a camera a book of myths in which our names do not appear.
Splittings from The Dream of a Common Language by Adrienne Rich 1. My body opens over San Francisco like the day light raining down I am not with her all night to that pain each pore crying the change of light I have been waking off and on not simply absence but destructive
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myself, if we could learn to learn from pain even as it grasps us if the mind, the mind that lives to let itself be crushed Pain would have to stand
it would loosen
but the mind could begin to speak to pain and pain would have to answer: We are older now we have met before my figure blotting out I am the pain of division these are my hands before your eyes all that is not mine creator of divisions
it is I who blot your lover from you and not the time-zones or the miles It is not separation calls me forth who am separation I have no existence 2. I believe I am choosing something now not to suffer uselessly yet still to feel but I
Does the infant memorize the body of the mother and create her in absence? primordial loneliness? once diverted or simply cry
mourning
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But we, we live so much in these configurations of the past to separate her I choose
I choose not to suffer uselessly to detect primordial pain as it stalks toward me flashing its bleak torch in my eyes her particular being I will not be divided by myths of separation while her mind and body in Manhattan are more with me than the smell of eucalyptus coolly burning 3. The world tells me I am its creature I am raked by eyes brushed by hands lay my head on these hills blotting out
abnegating power for love as women have done from power in her love I refuse these givens or hiding like a man the splitting I am choosing and not to use her for once
this time
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EZRA POUND
Vers De Socit
My wife and I have asked a crowd of craps To come and waste their time and ours: perhaps
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You'd care to join us? In a pig's arse, friend. Day comes to an end. The gas fire breathes, the trees are darkly swayed. And so Dear Warlock-Williams: I'm afraid-Funny how hard it is to be alone. I could spend half my evenings, if I wanted, Holding a glass of washing sherry, canted Over to catch the drivel of some bitch Who's read nothing but Which; Just think of all the spare time that has flown Straight into nothingness by being filled With forks and faces, rather than repaid Under a lamp, hearing the noise of wind, And looking out to see the moon thinned To an air-sharpened blade. A life, and yet how sternly it's instilled All solitude is selfish. No one now Believes the hermit with his gown and dish Talking to God (who's gone too); the big wish Is to have people nice to you, which means Doing it back somehow. Virtue is social. Are, then, these routines Playing at goodness, like going to church? Something that bores us, something we don't do well (Asking that ass about his fool research) But try to feel, because, however crudely, It shows us what should be? Too subtle, that. Too decent, too. Oh hell, Only the young can be alone freely. The time is shorter now for company, And sitting by a lamp more often brings Not peace, but other things. Beyond the light stand failure and remorse Whispering Dear Warlock-Williams: Why, of course-Philip Larkin MENDING WALL by Robert Frost Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
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And makes gaps even two can pass abreast. The work of hunters is another thing: I have come after them and made repair Where they have left not one stone on a stone, But they would have the rabbit out of hiding, To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean, No one has seen them made or heard them made, But at spring mending-time we find them there. I let my neighbor know beyond the hill; And on a day we meet to walk the line And set the wall between us once again. We keep the wall between us as we go. To each the boulders that have fallen to each. And some are loaves and some so nearly balls We have to use a spell to make them balance: 'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!' We wear our fingers rough with handling them. Oh, just another kind of out-door game, One on a side. It comes to little more: There where it is we do not need the wall: He is all pine and I am apple orchard. My apple trees will never get across And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'. Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder If I could put a notion in his head: 'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it Where there are cows? But here there are no cows. Before I built a wall I'd ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offence. Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him, But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather He said it for himself. I see him there Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed. He moves in darkness as it seems to me~ Not of woods only and the shade of trees. He will not go behind his father's saying, And he likes having thought of it so well He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors." FIRE AND ICE by Robert Frost Some say the world will end in fire,
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Some say in ice. From what Ive tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To know that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice.
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Deep and inscrutable singular Name. Thomas Stearns Eliot Macavity's a Mystery Cat: he's called the Hidden Paw For he's the master criminal who can defy the Law. He's the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the Flying Squad's despair: For when they reach the scene of crime - Macavity's not there! Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity, He's broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity. His powers of levitation would make a fakir stare, And when you reach the scene of crime - Macavity's not there! You may seek him in the basement, you may look up in the air But I tell you once and once again, Macavity's not there! Mcavity's a ginger cat, he's very tall and thin; You would know him if you saw him, for his eyes are sunken in. His brow is deeply lined with thought, his head is highly domed; His coat is dusty from neglect, his whiskers are uncombed. He sways his head from side to side, with movements like a snake; And when you think he's half asleep, he's always wide awake. Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity, For he's a fiend in feline shape, a monster of depravity. You may meet him in a by-street, you may see him in the square But when a crime's discovered, then Macavity's not there! He's outwardly respectable. (They say he cheats at cards.) And his footprints are not found in any file of Scotland Yard's. And when the larder's looted, or the jewel-case is rifled, Or when the milk is missing, or another Peke's been stifled, Or the greenhouse glass is broken, and the trellis past repair Ay, there's the wonder of the thing! Macavity's not there! And when the Foreign Office find a Treaty's gone astray, Or the Admiralty lose some plans and drawings by the way, There may be a scrap of paper in the hall or on the stair But it's useless to investigate - Mcavity's not there! And when the loss has been disclosed, the Secret Service say: `It must have been Macavity!' - but he's a mile away. You'll be sure to find him resting, or a-licking of his thumbs, Or engaged in doing complicated long-division sums. Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity, There never was a Cat of such deceitfulness and suavity. He always has an alibi, and one or two to spaer:
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At whatever time the deed took place - MACAVITY WASN'T THERE! And they say that all the Cats whose wicked deeds are widely known (I might mention Mungojerrie, I might mention Griddlebone) Are nothing more than agents for the Cat who all the time Just controls their operations: the Napoleon of Crime! Thomas Stearns Eliot The Rum Tum Tugger The Rum Tum Tugger is a Curious Cat: If you offer him pheasant he would rather have grouse. If you put him in a house he would much prefer a flat, If you put him in a flat then he'd rather have a house. If you set him on a mouse then he only wants a rat, If you set him on a rat then he'd rather chase a mouse. Yes the Rum Tum Tugger is a Curious Cat-And there isn't any call for me to shout it: For he will do As he do do And there's no doing anything about it! The Rum Tum Tugger is a terrible bore: When you let him in, then he wants to be out; He's always on the wrong side of every door, And as soon as he's at home, then he'd like to get about. He likes to lie in the bureau drawer, But he makes such a fuss if he can't get out. Yes the Rum Tum Tugger is a Curious Cat-And there isn't any use for you to doubt it: For he will do As he do do And there's no doing anything about it! The Rum Tum Tugger is a curious beast: His disobliging ways are a matter of habit. If you offer him fish then he always wants a feast; When there isn't any fish then he won't eat rabbit. If you offer him cream then he sniffs and sneers, For he only likes what he finds for himself; So you'll catch him in it right up to the ears, If you put it away on the larder shelf. The Rum Tum Tugger is artful and knowing, The Rum Tum Tugger doesn't care for a cuddle; But he'll leap on your lap in the middle of your sewing,
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For there's nothing he enjoys like a horrible muddle. Yes the Rum Tum Tugger is a Curious Cat-And there isn't any need for me to spout it: For he will do As he do do And theres no doing anything about it!
September 1, 1939
I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade: Waves of anger and fear Circulate over the bright And darkened lands of the earth, Obsessing our private lives; The unmentionable odour of death Offends the September night. Accurate scholarship can Unearth the whole offence From Luther until now That has driven a culture mad, Find what occurred at Linz What huge imago made A psychopathic god: I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return. Exiled Thucydides knew All that a speech can say About Democracy, And what dictators do, The elderly rubbish they talk To an apathetic grave; Analysed all in his book, The enlightenment driven away, The habit-forming pain, Mismanagement and grief: We must suffer them all again. Into this neutral air Where blind skyscrapers use Their full height to proclaim
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The strength of Collective Man, Each language pours its vain Competitive excuse: But who can live for long In an euphoric dream; Out of the mirror they stare, Imperialism's face And the international wrong. Faces along the bar Cling to their average day: The lights must never go out, The music must always play, All the conventions conspire To make this fort assume The furniture of home; Lest we should see where we are, Lost in a haunted wood, Children afraid of the night Who have never been happy or good. The windiest militant trash Important Persons shout Is not so crude as our wish: What mad Nijinsky wrote About Diaghilev Is true of the normal heart; For the error bred in the bone Of each woman and each man Craves what it cannot have, Not universal love But to be loved alone. From the conservative dark Into the ethical life The dense commuters come, Repeating their morning vow; 'I will be true to the wife, I'll concentrate more on my work,' And helpless governors wake To resume their compulsory game: Who can release them now, Who can reach the deaf, Who can speak for the dumb? All I have is a voice To undo the folded lie, The romantic lie in the brain
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Of the sensual man-in-the-street And the lie of Authority Whose buildings grope the sky: There is no such thing as the State And no one exists alone; Hunger allows no choice To the citizen or the police; We must love one another or die. Defenceless under the night Our world in stupor lies; Yet, dotted everywhere, Ironic points of light Flash out wherever the Just Exchange their messages: May I, composed like them Of Eros and of dust, Beleaguered by the same Negation and despair, Show an affirming flame. Wystan Hugh Auden In Memory of W. B. Yeats I He disappeared in the dead of winter: The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted, The snow disfigured the public statues; The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day. What instruments we have agree The day of his death was a dark cold day. Far from his illness The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests, The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays; By mourning tongues The death of the poet was kept from his poems. But for him it was his last afternoon as himself, An afternoon of nurses and rumours; The provinces of his body revolted, The squares of his mind were empty, Silence invaded the suburbs, The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers. Now he is scattered among a hundred cities And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections, To find his happiness in another kind of wood
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And be punished under a foreign code of conscience. The words of a dead man Are modified in the guts of the living. But in the importance and noise of to-morrow When the brokers are roaring like beasts on the floor of the Bourse, And the poor have the sufferings to which they are fairly accustomed, And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom, A few thousand will think of this day As one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual. What instruments we have agree The day of his death was a dark cold day. II You were silly like us; your gift survived it all: The parish of rich women, physical decay, Yourself. Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry. Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still, For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives In the valley of its making where executives Would never want to tamper, flows on south From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs, Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives, A way of happening, a mouth. III Earth, receive an honoured guest: William Yeats is laid to rest. Let the Irish vessel lie Emptied of its poetry. In the nightmare of the dark All the dogs of Europe bark, And the living nations wait, Each sequestered in its hate; Intellectual disgrace Stares from every human face, And the seas of pity lie Locked and frozen in each eye. Follow, poet, follow right To the bottom of the night, With your unconstraining voice Still persuade us to rejoice.
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With the farming of a verse Make a vineyard of the curse, Sing of human unsuccess In a rapture of distress. In the deserts of the heart Let the healing fountains start, In the prison of his days Teach the free man how to praise.
Musee des Beaux Arts About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters; how well, they understood Its human position; how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along; How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting For the miraculous birth, there always must be Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating On a pond at the edge of the wood: They never forgot That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse Scratches its innocent behind on a tree. In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on. The Shield of Achilles She looked over his shoulder For vines and olive trees, Marble well-governed cities And ships upon untamed seas, But there on the shining metal His hands had put instead An artificial wilderness And a sky like lead.
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A plain without a feature, bare and brown, No blade of grass, no sign of neighborhood, Nothing to eat and nowhere to sit down, Yet, congregated on its blankness, stood An unintelligible multitude, A million eyes, a million boots in line, Without expression, waiting for a sign. Out of the air a voice without a face Proved by statistics that some cause was just In tones as dry and level as the place: No one was cheered and nothing was discussed; Column by column in a cloud of dust They marched away enduring a belief Whose logic brought them, somewhere else, to grief. She looked over his shoulder For ritual pieties, White flower-garlanded heifers, Libation and sacrifice, But there on the shining metal Where the altar should have been, She saw by his flickering forge-light Quite another scene. Barbed wire enclosed an arbitrary spot Where bored officials lounged (one cracked a joke) And sentries sweated for the day was hot: A crowd of ordinary decent folk Watched from without and neither moved nor spoke As three pale figures were led forth and bound To three posts driven upright in the ground. The mass and majesty of this world, all That carries weight and always weighs the same Lay in the hands of others; they were small And could not hope for help and no help came: What their foes like to do was done, their shame Was all the worst could wish; they lost their pride And died as men before their bodies died. She looked over his shoulder For athletes at their games, Men and women in a dance Moving their sweet limbs Quick, quick, to music, But there on the shining shield His hands had set no dancing-floor
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But a weed-choked field. A ragged urchin, aimless and alone, Loitered about that vacancy; a bird Flew up to safety from his well-aimed stone: That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third, Were axioms to him, who'd never heard Of any world where promises were kept, Or one could weep because another wept. The thin-lipped armorer, Hephaestos, hobbled away, Thetis of the shining breasts Cried out in dismay At what the god had wrought To please her son, the strong Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles Who would not live long.
The Unknown Citizen (To JS/07/M/378/ This Marble Monument Is Erected by the State) He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be One against whom there was no official complaint, And all the reports on his conduct agree That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint, For in everything he did he served the Greater Community. Except for the War till the day he retired He worked in a factory and never got fired But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc. Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views, For his Union reports that he paid his dues, (Our report on his Union shows it was sound) And our Social Psychology workers found That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink. The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way. Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured, And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured. Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Installment Plan
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And had everything necessary to the Modern Man, A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire. Our researchers into Public Opinion are content That he held the proper opinions for the time of year; When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went. He was married and added five children to the population, Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation. And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education. Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd: Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard. Lullaby Lay your sleeping head, my love, Human on my faithless arm; Time and fevers burn away Individual beauty from Thoughtful children, and the grave Proves the child ephemeral: But in my arms till break of day Let the living creature lie, Mortal, guilty, but to me The entirely beautiful. Soul and body have no bounds: To lovers as they lie upon Her tolerant enchanted slope In their ordinary swoon, Grave the vision Venus sends Of supernatural sympathy, Universal love and hope; While abstract insight wakes Among the glaciers and the rocks The hermit's sensual ecstasy. Certainty, fidelity On the stroke of midnight pass Like vibrations of a bell, And fashionable madmen raise Their pedantic boring cry: Every farthing of the cost, All the dreaded cards foretell, Shall be paid, but from this night Not a whisper, not a thought, Not a kiss nor look be lost.
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Beauty, midnight, vision dies: Let the winds of dawn that blow Softly round your dreaming head Such a day of sweetness show Eye and knocking heart may bless, Find your mortal world enough; Noons of dryness see you fed By the involuntary powers, Nights of insult let you pass Watched by every human love.
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flutes of green and amethyst. But under cliff-eaves there were glooming caves, weed-curtained, dark and grey; a cold air stirred in my hair, and the light waned, as I hurried away. Down from a hill ran a green rill; its water I drank to my heart's ease. Up its fountain-stair to a country fair of ever-eve I came, far from the seas, climbing into meadows of fluttering shadows: flowers lay there like fallen stars, and on a blue pool, glassy and cool, like floating moons the nenuphars. Alders were sleeping, and willows weeping by a slow river of rippling weeds; gladdon-swords guarded the fords, and green spears, and arrow-reeds. There was echo of song all the evening long down in the valley; many a thing running to and fro: hares white as snow, voles out of holes; moths on the wing with lantern-eyes; in quiet surprise brocks were staring out of dark doors. I heard dancing there, music in the air, feet going quick on the green floors. But whenever I came it was ever the same: the feet fled, and all was still; never a greeting, only the fleeting pipes, voices, horns on the hill. Of river-leaves and the rush-sheaves I made me a mantle of jewel-green, a tall wand to hold, and a flag of gold; my eyes shone like the star-sheen. With flowers crowned I stood on a mound, and shrill as a call at cock-crow proudly I cried: 'Why do you hide? Why do none speak, wherever I go? Here now I stand, king of this land, with gladdon-sword and reed-mace. Answer my call! Come forth all! Speak to me words! Show me a face!' Black came a cloud as a night-shroud. Like a dark mole groping I went, to the ground falling, on my hands crawling with eyes blind and my back bent. I crept to a wood: silent it stood in its dead leaves, bare were its boughs.
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There must I sit, wandering in wit, while owls snored in their hollow house. For a year and a day there must I stay: beetles were tapping in the rotten trees, spiders were weaving, in the mould heaving puffballs loomed about my knees. At last there came light in my long night, and I saw my hair hanging grey. 'Bent though I be, I must find the sea! I have lost myself, and I know not the way, but let me be gone!' Then I stumbled on; like a hunting bat shadow was over me; in my ears dinned a withering wind, and with ragged briars I tried to cover me. My hands were torn and my knees worn, and years were heavy upon my back, when the rain in my face took a salt taste, and I smelled the smell of sea-wrack. Birds came sailing, mewing, wailing; I heard voices in cold caves, seals barking, and rocks snarling, and in spout-holes the gulping of waves. Winter came fast; into a mist I passed, to land's end my years I bore; snow was in the air, ice in my hair, darkness was lying on the last shore. There still afloat waited the boat, in the tide lifting, its prow tossing. Weary I lay, as it bore me away, the waves climbing, the seas crossing, passing old hulls clustered with gulls and great ships laden with light, coming to haven, dark as a raven, silent as snow, deep in the night. Houses were shuttered, wind round them muttered, roads were empty. I sat by a door, and where drizzling rain poured down a drain I cast away all that I bore: in my clutching hand some grains of sand, and a sea-shell silent and dead. Never will my ear that bell hear, never my feet that shore tread Never again, as in sad lane, in blind alley and in long street ragged I walk. To myself I talk; for still they speak not, men that I meet.
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THE KISS To these I turn, in these I trust; Brother Lead and Sister Steel. To his blind power I make appeal; I guard her beauty clean from rust. He spins and burns and loves the air, And splits a skull to win my praise; But up the nobly marching days She glitters naked, cold and fair. Sweet Sister, grant your soldier this; That in good fury he may feel The body where he sets his heel Quail from your downward darting kiss.
Siegfried Sassoon
'They' by Siegfried Sassoon
The Bishop tells us: 'When the boys come back 'They will not be the same; for they'll have fought 'In a just cause: they lead the last attack 'On Anti-Christ; their comrades' blood has bought 'New right to breed an honourable race, 'They have challenged Death and dared him face to face.' 'We're none of us the same!' the boys reply. 'For George lost both his legs; and Bill's stone blind; 'Poor Jim's shot through the lungs and like to die; 'And Bert's gone syphilitic: you'll not find 'A chap who's served that hasn't found some change. ' And the Bishop said: 'The ways of God are strange!'
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No, no; he wouldnt count them any more... The dead have done with pain: Theyve choked; they cant come back to life again. When Dick was killed last week he looked like that, Flapping along the fire-step like a fish, After the blazing crump had knocked him flat... How many dead? As many as ever you wish. Dont count em; theyre too many. Wholl buy my nice fresh corpses, two a penny?
Futility Move him into the sun -Gently its touch awoke him once, At home, whispering of fields unsown.
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Always it woke him, even in France, Until this morning and this snow. If anything might rouse him now The kind old sun will know. Think how it wakes the seeds -Woke, once, the clays of a cold star. Are limbs so dear-achieved, are sides Full-nerved, -- still warm, -- too hard to stir? Was it for this the clay grew tall? -- O what made fatuous sunbeams toil To break earth's sleep at all?
THE LETTER With B.E.F. June 10. Dear Wife, (O Blast this pencil. 'Ere, Bill, lend's a knife.) I'm in the pink at present, dear. I think the war will end this year. We don't see much of them square'eaded 'Uns. We're out of harm's way, not bad fed. I'm longing for a taste of your old buns. (Say, Jimmie, spare's a bite of bread.) There don't seem much to say just now. (Yer what? Then don't, yer ruddy cow! And give us back me cigarette!) I'll soon be 'ome. You mustn't fret. My feet's improvin', as I told you of. We're out in rest now. Never fear. (VRACH! By crumbs, but that was near.) Mother might spare you half a sov. Kiss Nell and Bert. When me and you (Eh? What the 'ell! Stand to? Stand to! Jim give's a hand with pack on, lad. Guh! Christ! I'm hit. Take 'old. Aye, bad. No, damn your iodine. Jim? 'Ere! Write my old girl, Jim, there's a dear.) The Yellow Bittern Bittern, I'm sorry to see you stretched with your bones decayed and eaten away. Not want of food but need of a drink has brought you so to lie face up. I feel it worse than the ruin of Troy
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to see you stretched on the naked stones, who caused no hurt nor harm in the world, as happy with boghole water as wine. It hurts, fair bittern, a thousandfold --your fallen head on the open road, whose honk I heard in the early mornings out on the mud as you took your drink. Everyone tells your brother Cathal that's certainly how I'm going to die. Not so. Behold this handsome bird so lately dead for want of a drop. Sorrow, young bittern, a thousandfold to see you before me among the clumps, and the big rats travelling toward your wake, taking part in the fun and games. If only you'd sent me word in time that you were in trouble and needed a drink I'd have dealt a blow at Vesey's lake would have wetted your mouth and your innards too. Your other birds I don't lament, blackbird, thrush, or the grey crane, but my yellow bittern full of heart so like myself in face and hue. He was for ever taking a drink and they say I'm the same from time to time --but I'll leave undrunk no drop I find for fear I'd catch my death of thirst. My darling said give up the drink or I've only a little while to live but I told her that she told a lie, the selfsame drink prolongs my life. Have ye not seen this smooth-necked bird that died of thirst a while ago? So wet your lips, my neighbours dear. There won't be a drop when you're dead and gone. -- Cathal Bui Mac Giolla Ghunna (1680-1756)