Skip to main content

Preludes

By T. S. Eliot

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.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Remembering Evelio Javier

Some of our heroes may have been more brilliant or achieved more greatly, but I find it hard to think of any who lived more purely and more single mindedly than Evelio... his commitment to democracy, to social justice and to a life among the poor in our land. Februay 11, 2009 in Panay Island, Philippines is Evelio B. Javier Day. It is the 22nd Anniversary of the assassination of Evelio Javier. It was a stunning and decisive event towards our eventual liberation from Martial Law later that February 1986. Many in our Ateneo community remember meeting Evelio’s body at the airport two days later, and the Mass and the long march from Baclaran to the Ateneo de Manila on Valentine’s Day, February 14, 1986. We had a Mass at sunset in the field beside the Blue Eagle Gym and ended the Mass with the electrifying experience of hearing Fr. Jose A. Cruz, S.J. read for the first time in public the letter of the CBCP on the elections. Evelio B. Javier was born to Everardo Autajay Javier of Hamtic and ...

When I Met U

Some of the devices used in the story to separate the pair are actually dated and had been done by the mother of Leonor Rivera when she broke her daughter’s romance with Jose Rizal. But instead of intercepting letters, it is the cell phone STAR BYTES By Butch Francisco Updated February 12, 2009 12:00 AM In the story, Richard and KC get stranded on a deserted island for a night on their way to a wedding in Palawan. Even if there is initial dislike for each other in the beginning, they still end up having a romance (but, of course — this is a love story!). The trouble is — they are committed to other people: Richard to Iya Villania and KC to Alfred Vargas. From the start there is already a doubt in Richard’s heart about his love for Iya and so we see that their relationship is brittle. From KC’s end, it is easy to understand why she had mixed feelings for Alfred: He is controlling, cold and has no sense of humor. In other words, he is boring. Their proble...

SHOPPING for HOME GYM EQUIPMENT! (+70% Sneaker SALE at Toby's)