Preludes- T.S. Eliot

[wyvernstars.livejournal.com]

I.

The winter evening settles down
With smell of steaks in passageways.
Six o'clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves about your feet
And newspapers from vacant lots;
The showers beat
On broken blinds and chimney-pots,
And at the corner of the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
And then the lighting of the lamps.


II.

The morning comes to consciousness
Of faint stale smells of beer
From the sawdust-trampled street
With all its muddy feet that press
To early coffee-stands.
With the other masquerades
That time resumes,
One thinks of all the hands
That are raising dingy shades
In a thousand furnished rooms.


III.

You tossed a blanket from the bed,
You lay upon your back, and waited;
You dozed, and watched the night revealing
The thousand sordid images
Of which your soul was constituted;
They flickered against the ceiling.
And when all the world came back
And the light crept up between the shutters,
And you heard the sparrows in the gutters,
You had such a vision of the street
As the street hardly understands;
Sitting along the bed's edge, where
You curled the papers from your hair,
Or clasped the yellow soles of feet
In the palms of both soiled hands.


IV.

His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o'clock
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.

T.S. Eliot, 'La Figlia Che Piange (The Weeping Girl)'

[duathir.livejournal.com]

La Figlia Che Piange (The Weeping Girl)

Stand on the highest pavement of the stair -
Lean on a garden urn -
Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair -
Clasp your flowers to you with a pained suprise -
Fling them to the ground and turn
With a fugitive resentment in your eyes:
But weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.

So I would have had him leave,
So I would have had her stand and grieve,
So he would have left
As the soul leaves the body torn and bruised,
As the mind deserts the body it has used.
I should find
Some way incomparably light and deft,
Some way we both should understand,
Simple and faithless as a smile and a shake of the hand.

She turned away, but with the autumn weather
Compelled my imagination many days,
Many days and many hours:
Her hair over her arms and her arms full of flowers.
And I wonder how they should have been together!
I should have lost a gesture and a pose.
Sometimes these cogitations still amaze
The troubled midnight, and the noon's repose.

by T.S. Eliot

My Father's Gun by Elise Patchen

[miserbrothers.livejournal.com]

My mother never guessed I was her witness
the afternoon she emptied out his closet,
saw her unclasp the case, as if embossed

with gold, watched her touch it, heft it in hand,
then place it back, her wedding stone refracting.
Waking at night to find my door outlined

by light, I made a wish: to grow as tall
as my mother, to reach the shelf, to leave
behind a curl of smoke, a thin suggestion,

a jinn escaped from its underground bottle
like those collected after their late dinners,
spiraling out to slither through the crack

of their bedroom door, twisting up into
the refuge of my father's closet, shielded
by rows of reassuring shoes, clean soldiers

called to attention, shoe-trees snug inside.
Invisible in smoke, I'd take the gun
and hurl it out into the quiet lake,

that place where children play their games
safe as houses and, sinking, it would leave
a wake of rings within rings within rings.

'Bad Karma' by Timothy Murphy

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Bad Karma

A girl driving her donkeys out to grass
was ambushed by an old, outlandish man
who tried to straddle her. The robust lass
thrust off her would-be ravisher and ran
home to her mother in their humble yurt.
As barking mastiffs spooked her father's yak,
the lathered girl had scarcely breath to blurt
her story of the reprobate's attack.

Her mother recognized the Tantric seer
Dugpa Kunlegs, revered throughout Tibet.
Among the Nyingmapa he had no peer;
who knew what prodigy he might beget?
"Go throw your body at his sacred feet
and gratify the mighty lama's whim,"
mother instructed daughter. "Go entreat
Rinpoche's pardon for repulsing him!"

The girl returned and flung herself prostrate.
"My child," the Holy One sighed wearily,
"Women don't interest me. You've come too late
to implement my purpose. Recently
the Grand Lama of Yerpa Gompa died.
Wasting his life on drunkenness and mirth,
he left a host of sins unrectified.
I sought to save him from a bad rebirth
after I glimpsed his spirit drifting here.
But while you left your herd to graze, alas,
two of your donkeys coupled; and I fear
the Grand Lama will be reborn an ass."

~~Timothy Murphy