O Processo - A Dialéctica do Espírito.

"Spirit at once recoils in horror from the abstract unity, from this self-less substantiality, and against it affirms individuality."

LEIBNIZ

Body Suddenly

- The horrible, the inescapable truth.

Suddenly, Last Summer, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1959

Mrs. Venable: My son, Sebastian and I constructed our days. Each day we would carve each day like a piece of sculpture, leaving behind us a trail of days like a gallery of sculpture until suddenly, last summer.

''Quanto tempo é realmente sete vezes dez anos?'' SK

''A minha observação da vida é inteiramente desprovida de sentido. Admito que um espírito malévolo me tenha colocado uns óculos no nariz, nos quais uma das lentes aumenta numa escala monstruosa, e a outra diminui de acordo com a mesma escala.''

Soren Kierkegaard, Ou-Ou

Felicidade

''(...)A felicidade é antes um fim, que só pode ser alcançado Aqui-Agora. O verdadeiro des-envolvimento, o da consciência livre de tudo o que a envolve, é a Felicidade. Não o progresso material ou tecnocientífico, nem o crescimento económico, mas a Felicidade enquanto fruição plena da Vida inseparável da verdade e do amor. 

A verdade é o desvelar da natureza profunda da realidade. É uma experiência de abertura sem limites, a sabedoria: não um conhecimento intelectual, mas o saborear a plenitude da vida. Os gregos chamaram-lhe aletheia – não-esquecimento, des-velamento – e os indianos satya, de sat, ser, o que é, o real. A verdade é não trocar o real, tudo o que se manifesta aqui e agora, a cada instante, por preocupações com o passado e o futuro e por palavras, conceitos e imagens oriundos das nossas percepções, interpretações e juízos limitados. A etimologia de real evoca a riqueza, a abundância. A natureza das coisas é exuberante, plena de todas as possibilidades: a verdade e a sabedoria são a experiência disso no presente, pois só aqui-agora mesmo a vida se oferece. (...)''

PAULO BORGES

''DEUS É O EXISTIRMOS E ISTO NÃO SER TUDO.''

Livro do Desassossego

PRÉ-DETERMINISMOS

''Ninguém regressa dos mortos, ninguém entrou no mundo sem chorar, ninguém pergunta a alguém quando quer chegar, ninguém pergunta quando quer partir.''

Kierkegaard, Ou-Ou

Sayat Nova, Sergei Paradjanov, 1969

como se tudo tivessemos perdido / numa noite da alma em que para nós não brilha / nem o fulgor de uma estrela

Closed Vision, Marc'O, 1954

: A actualidade de Pascal

''sinónimos de Céu''

História da Eternidade, Jorge Luís Borges

''even the knowing animals are aware that we feel / little secure and at home in our interpreted world.''

Duino Elegies: The First Elegy - Poem by Rainer Maria Rilke

Translated by Albert Ernest Flemming 

Rainer Maria Rilke

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'
hierarchies? and even if one of them suddenly
pressed me against his heart, I would perish
in the embrace of his stronger existence.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror
which we are barely able to endure and are awed
because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Each single angel is terrifying.
And so I force myself, swallow and hold back
the surging call of my dark sobbing.
Oh, to whom can we turn for help?
Not angels, not humans;
and even the knowing animals are aware that we feel
little secure and at home in our interpreted world.
There remains perhaps some tree on a hillside
daily for us to see; yesterday's street remains for us
stayed, moved in with us and showed no signs of leaving.
Oh, and the night, the night, when the wind
full of cosmic space invades our frightened faces.
Whom would it not remain for -that longed-after,
gently disenchanting night, painfully there for the
solitary heart to achieve? Is it easier for lovers?
Don't you know yet ? Fling out of your arms the
emptiness into the spaces we breath -perhaps the birds
will feel the expanded air in their more ferven flight.

Yes, the springtime were in need of you. Often a star
waited for you to espy it and sense its light.
A wave rolled toward you out of the distant past,
or as you walked below an open window,
a violin gave itself to your hearing.
All this was trust. But could you manage it?
Were you not always distraught by expectation,
as if all this were announcing the arrival
of a beloved? (Where would you find a place
to hide her, with all your great strange thoughts
coming and going and often staying for the night.)
When longing overcomes you, sing of women in love;
for their famous passion is far from immortal enough.
Those whom you almost envy, the abandoned and
desolate ones, whom you found so much more loving
than those gratified. Begin ever new again
the praise you cannot attain; remember:
the hero lives on and survives; even his downfall
was for him only a pretext for achieving
his final birth. But nature, exhausted, takes lovers
back into itself, as if such creative forces could never be
achieved a second time.
Have you thought of Gaspara Stampa sufficiently:

that any girl abandoned by her lover may feel
from that far intenser example of loving:
"Ah, might I become like her!" Should not their oldest
sufferings finally become more fruitful for us?
Is it not time that lovingly we freed ourselves
from the beloved and, quivering, endured:
as the arrow endures the bow-string's tension,
and in this tense release becomes more than itself.
For staying is nowhere.

Voices, voices. Listen my heart, as only saints
have listened: until the gigantic call lifted them
clear off the ground. Yet they went on, impossibly,
kneeling, completely unawares: so intense was
their listening. Not that you could endure
the voice of God -far from it! But listen
to the voice of the wind and the ceaseless message
that forms itself out of silence. They sweep
toward you now from those who died young.
Whenever they entered a church in Rome or Naples,
did not their fate quietly speak to you as recently
as the tablet did in Santa Maria Formosa?
What do they want of me? to quietly remove
the appearance of suffered injustice that,
at times, hinders a little their spirits from
freely proceeding onward.

Of course, it is strange to inhabit the earth no longer,
to no longer use skills on had barely time to acquire;
not to observe roses and other things that promised
so much in terms of a human future, no longer
to be what one was in infinitely anxious hands;
to even discard one's own name as easily as a child
abandons a broken toy.
Strange, not to desire to continue wishing one's wishes.
Strange to notice all that was related, fluttering
so loosely in space. And being dead is hard work
and full of retrieving before one can gradually feel a
trace of eternity. -Yes, but the liviing make
the mistake of drawing too sharp a distinction.
Angels (they say) are often unable to distinguish
between moving among the living or the dead.
The eternal torrent whirls all ages along with it,
through both realms forever, and their voices are lost in
its thunderous roar.

In the end the early departed have no longer
need of us. One is gently weaned from things
of this world as a child outgrows the need
of its mother's breast. But we who have need
of those great mysteries, we for whom grief is
so often the source of spiritual growth,
could we exist without them?
Is the legend vain that tells of music's beginning
in the midst of the mourning for Linos?
the daring first sounds of song piercing
the barren numbness, and how in that stunned space
an almost godlike youth suddenly left forever,
and the emptiness felt for the first time
those harmonious vibrations which now enrapture
and comfort and help us.

''As asas ensanguentadas já estão / Saradas e todas as esperanças renascem.''

I could see love and God
If you need it, see it
This is all
Won't you fall?

Amen Dunes - Splits Are Parted

Summer Interlude, Bergman, 1951

Menons Klagen Um Diotima/ Pranto de Ménon Por Diotima

1

Todos os dias saio em busca de algo diferente,
Demandei-o há muito por todos os atalhos destes campos;
Além nos cumes frescos visito as sombras,
E as fontes; o espírito erra dos cimos para a planície,
Implorando sossego; tal como o animal ferido se refugia nas florestas,
Onde antes repousava pelo meio-dia à sombra, fora de perigo;
Mas o seu verde abrigo já não lhe dá novas forças,
O espinho cravado fá-lo gemer e tira-lhe o sono,
De nada servem o calor da luz nem a frescura da noite,
E em vão mergulha as feridas nas ondas da corrente.
E tal como é inútil à terra oferecer-lhe a agradável
Erva curativa e nenhum zéfiro consegue estancar o sangue que fermenta,
O mesmo me acontece, caríssimos! Assim parece, e não haverá ninguém
Que possa aliviar-me da tristeza do meu sonho?

2

De nada serve, ó deuses da morte, enquanto tiverdes
Em vosso poder, prisioneiro, o homem acossado pelo destino,
Enquanto, no vosso furor, o tiverdes lançado na noite tenebrosa,
De nada serve então procurar-vos, suplicar-vos ou queixarmo-nos,
Ou viver pacientemente neste desterro de temor,
E escutar sorrindo o vosso canto sóbrio.
Se assim for, esquece a tua felicidade e dormita silenciosamente.
No entanto brota no teu peito uma réstea de esperança,
Tu ainda não podes, ó minha alma! Não podes ainda
Habituar-te e sonhas dentro de um sonho férreo!
Não estou em festa, mas gostaria de coroar-me de flores;
Não me encontro eu só?Mas algo apaziguador deve
Aproximar-se de mim vindo de longe e sou forçado a sorrir e a admirar-me
Por experimentar alegria no meio de tão grande sofrimento

3

Luz do amor! Também envolves os mortos no ouro do teu brilho!
Imagens de um tempo mais radioso, sois vós que me iluminais pela noite fora?
Sede bem-vindos vós jardins suaves, vós montes do poente,
E vós silenciosos caminhos do bosque,
Testemunhos de felicidade celestial, e vós estrelas que do alto olhais,
E que outrora me abençoáveis, olhando-me!
E vós também, amantes, vós belos filhos de Maio,
Rosas discretas e vós, lírios, invoco-vos ainda tantas vezes!
É verdade que as Primaveras se desvanecem, um ano sucede a outro,
E assim o tempo rodopia em mudança e luta
Sobre as nossas cabeças mortais, mas não perante olhos bem-aventurados,
E aos amantes uma outra vida é concedida.
Pois todos os dias e anos estelares, Diotima!
Estavam em nosso redor intimamente unidos para sempre;

4

Mas nos caminhávamos juntos pela terra, num mútuo contentamento,
Como os cisnes amantes, ao repousarem no lago,
Ou embalados pelas ondas, olhando as águas,
Espelho de nuvens de prata e esteira de azul etéreo
Rasgada pelos barcos de passagem. E quando o vento norte ameaçava,
Inimigo dos amantes espalhando lamentos, e as folhas
Caíam dos ramos e a chuva caía ao sabor do vento,
Sorríamos serenos, experimentando Deus em nós
Em diálogo confiante, num uníssono canto interior,
Num âmbito de paz, em solidão alegre de meninos.
Mas na minha casa está agora o vazio, levaram-me
Os meus olhos e a mim, tal como a ela, me perdi.
Por isso ando errante e é forçoso que viva como
As sombras e tudo o mais há muito perdeu o sentido.

5

Desejo festejar, mas para quê?E cantar com outros,
Mas assim sozinho tudo o que é divino me falta.
É este o meu mal, sei-o, uma maldição paralisa-me
Os tendões e abate-me ao menor movimento,
E assim passo o dia insensível e mudo como os meninos,
Apenas me brotam dos olhos frias lágrimas,
E a verdura dos campos entristece-me e o canto dos pássaros
Porque na sua alegria são também mensageiros do céu,
Mas o sol que reanima cai frio e esterilmente
No meu peito convulso como se fossem raios nocturnos,
Ai! E inútil e vazio como paredes de uma prisão o céu
É um peso excessivo que paira sobre a minha cabeça!

6

Juventude, como eras outrora diferente! Não haverá súplicas
Que te façam jamais voltar? Existirá algum caminho de regresso?
Acontecer-me-á o mesmo que aos descrentes que no passado
Mesmo assim se sentaram no banquete divino com brilho no olhar,
Mas, em breve saciados, esses convidados em delírio,
Emudeceram então e agora, sob o canto das brisas,
Adormeceram sob a terra em flor, até que alguma vez
O poder de um milagre, aos que pereceram, faça
Regressar e de novo mover-se sobre o solo verdejante.
Um sopro sagrado percorre divinamente a figura de luz,
Quando a festa se anima e se agitam vagas de amor,
E na embriaguez celeste a torrente viva rumoreja,
Quando soa no subsolo, e a noite oferece os seus tesouros,
E, subindo à tona de ribeiros, o ouro enterrado cintila.

7

Mas tu, que dantes, já nas encruzilhadas, quando
A teus pés caí, consolando-me, me apontavas para algo mais belo,
Tu que me ensinaste a ver a grandeza e a cantar aos deuses mais alegremente,
Silencioso, como eles, contendo o meu entusiasmo,
Filha dos deuses! Voltarei a ver-te, voltarás a saudar-se, como dantes,
Voltarás, como dantes, a falar-me de coisas sublimes?
Olha, tenho que chorar e lamentar-me diante de ti, pelo menos,
Ao pensar em momentos mais felizes, dos quais a alma se envergonha.
Porque demorei tanto, tanto tempo a procurar-te por pálidos caminhos terrestres,
Habituado a ti, errante,
Anjo de alegria! Mas em vão e os anos escoaram-se,
Desde que, cheios de pressentimentos, à nossa volta víamos o fulgor crepuscular.

8

Apenas a ti, heroína, a tua luz te mantém na luz
E a tua paciência, amável, te mantém no amor;
E nem sequer estás só; estás acompanhada nos teus jogos,
Onde quer que floresças e descanses entre as rosas do ano;
E o próprio Pai te envia ternas canções de embalar
Pelas mãos de musas que respiram suavidade.
Sim, é ela mesma! Ainda vejo diante dos meus olhos a Ateniense,
Em corpo inteiro, pairando e aproximando-se em silêncio, como dantes.
Espírito amável! E tal como da fonte dos teus pensamentos serenos
O teu raio de luz recai, abençoado, sobre os mortais;
Do mesmo modo mo demonstras e dizes, para que eu a outros
O repita, pois também outros há que não o crêem,
Que a alegria, mais imortal do que os cuidados e a fúria,
Num dia áureo se tornará por fim quotidiana.

9

Por isso vos quero também agradecer, deuses celestes, e finalmente
No peito mais aliviado respira de novo a oração do vate.
E tal como quando com ela me encontrava nos cumes soalheiros,
Há um Deus que, interpelando-me do interior do templo, me devolve à vida.
Também quero viver! O verde surge! E como que dedilhado numa lira sagrada
Chega o apelo dos montes argênteos de Apolo!
Vem! Tudo foi como num sonho! As asas ensanguentadas já estão
Saradas e todas as esperanças renascem.
Ainda há muita grandeza por achar e quem assim
Amou é forçoso que entre na órbita dos deuses.
Acompanhai-vos, horas sagradas! E vós, solenes
Jovens! Permanecei, santos pressentimentos, e vós,
Súplicas ardentes! E vós, entusiasmos e todos vós,
Génios bons, a quem é grato estar entre os amantes;
Permanecei junto de nós até pisarmos o mesmo solo
Onde todos os deuses do Alto se preparam para regressar,
Onde estão as águias, as constelações, os mensageiros do Pai
Onde as musas se encontram e donde provêm os heróis e os amantes,
Que aí, ou também aqui, nos encontremos sobre uma ilha orvalhada,
Onde todos os nossos estarão, florescendo juntos em jardins,
Onde os cânticos serão verdadeiros e as Primaveras por mais tempo belas,
E de novo comece um ano para as nossas almas


Friedrich Hölderlin in Elegias. Trad. Maria Teresa Dias Furtado. Assírio&Alvim, 1992

''tudo é sempre novo, e antes de este hoje nunca houve este hoje. ''

A Felicidade vem da Monotonia

Em sua essência a vida é monótona. A felicidade consiste pois numa adaptação razoavelmente exacta à monotonia da vida. Tornarmo-nos monótonos é tornarmo-nos iguais à vida; é, em suma, viver plenamente. E viver plenamente é ser feliz. 

Os ilógicos doentes riem - de mau grado, no fundo - da felicidade burguesa, da monotonia da vida do burguês que vive em regularidade quotidiana e, da mulher dele que se entretém no arranjo da casa e se distrai nas minúcias de cuidar dos filhos e fala dos vizinhos e dos conhecidos. Isto, porém, é que é a felicidade. 

Parece, a princípio, que as cousas novas é que devem dar prazer ao espírito; mas as cousas novas são poucas e cada uma delas é nova só uma vez. Depois, a sensibilidade é limitada, e não vibra indefinidamente. Um excesso de cousas novas acabará por cansar, porque não há sensibilidade para acompanhar os estímulos dela. 

Conformar-se com a monotonia é achar tudo novo sempre. A visão burguesa da vida é a visão científica; porque, com efeito, tudo é sempre novo, e antes de este hoje nunca houve este hoje. 

É claro que ele não diria nada disto. Às minhas observações, limita-se a sorrir; e é o seu sorriso que me traz, pormenorizadas, as considerações que deixo escritas, por meditação dos pósteros. 

Fernando Pessoa, in 'Reflexões Pessoais' 

o mundo tem memória da vida

(...)
Mesmo que os amantes se percam, continuará o amor;
E a morte perderá o seu domínio.
(...)
DYLAN THOMAS
 
(...)
tivesse de acabar, sempre a doer, 
sempre a doer de tanta perfeição 
que ao deixar de bater-me o coração 
fique por nós o teu inda a bater, 
quando eu morrer segura a minha mão. 
Vasco Graça Moura, in "Antologia dos Sessenta Anos" 

''à ventura pelos deuses dada'', descobrir debaixo das máscaras :

(...)

''Muitas são decerto as maravilhas; porventura a fala / dos mortais excede o discurso da verdade.''
(...)
Píndaro (Ode Olímpica I)

''God becomes as we are, that we may be as he is.'' Blake

 The Forest Song (Yuri Ilyenko, 1981)

(soul searching is soul finding)

“Solitude sometimes is best society.” 

― John Milton, Paradise Lost

Tame Impala - Solitude Is Bliss (2010)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-F2e9fmYL7Y

A spell to ward off the darkness (2013),  Ben Rivers & Ben Russell

Two Years At Sea (2011),  Ben Rivers

“First come the wild and solitary, then those tied to a few in faithful friendship, next those who side with the manyto attain civil ends, and finally, in pursuit of particular ends of utility or pleasure, the wholly dissolute , who, amidst the great multitude of bodies, return to the first solitude of the soul.” 
― Giambattista Vico: The First New Science

 ''...But everything that may someday be possible for many people, the solitary man can now, already, prepare and build with his own hands, which make fewer mistakes. Therefore, dear Sir, love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away, you write, and this shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast. And if what is near you is far away, then your vastness is already among the stars and is very great; be happy about your growth, in which of course you can't take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front of them and don't torment them with your doubts and don't frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn't be able to comprehend. Seek out some simple and true feeling of what you have in common with them, which doesn't necessarily have to alter when you yourself change again and again; when you see them, love life in a form that is not your own and be indulgent toward those who are growing old, who are afraid of the aloneness that you trust.'' Letters To A Young Poet, Rilke

do céu um inferno

A mente não deve ser modificada pelo tempo e pelo lugar. 
A mente é o seu próprio lugar, e dentro de si 
Pode fazer um inferno do céu, do céu um inferno.

MILTON, O Paraíso Perdido

{Angel Raphael visits Eden, from Milton's Paradise Lost. [John Martin, 1825];

Orfeu

Com a doce música,

sobre sua cabeça
faziam ninho
os pássaros inumeráveis,
e da água azul saltavam peixes.

Simónides de Ceos

Nazimova's Salome (1923)

: o deus dentro não tem fora

"A rosa não tem porquê. Floresce porque floresce. Não cuida de si mesma. Nem pergunta se alguém a vê..."

Angelus Silesius

Nada é mais acessível ao espírito do que aquilo que é infinito.

Sobre a Natureza como um corpo fechado - como uma árvore - na qual nós somos as flores em botão. 

NOVALIS (Fragmentos)

Henry Wessel 

(e a morte perderá o seu domínio)

(...)
odiai, odiai a luz que começa a morrer.
(...)


Dylan Thomas
A mão ao assinar este papel

O Pagador de Promessas (1962) de Anselmo Duarte

The Waste Land

The Waste Land

Related Poem Content Details

BY T. S. ELIOT

                                  FOR EZRA POUND
                                IL MIGLIOR FABBRO

              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