Complete Poems and Plays

by T. S. Eliot

  AGATHA. There are hours when there seems to be no past or future,

  Only a present moment of pointed light

  When you want to burn. When you stretch out your hand

  To the flames. They only come once,

  Thank God, that kind. Perhaps there is another kind,

  I believe, across a whole Thibet of broken stones

  That lie, fang up, a lifetime’s march. I have believed this.

  HARRY. I have known neither.

  AGATHA. The autumn came too soon, not soon enough.

  The rain and wind had not shaken your father

  Awake yet. I found him thinking

  How to get rid of your mother. What simple plots!

  He was not suited to the role of murderer.

  HARRY. In what way did he wish to murder her?

  AGATHA. Oh, a dozen foolish ways, each one abandoned

  For something more ingenious. You were due in three months’ time;

  You would not have been born in that event: I stopped him.

  I can take no credit for a little common sense,

  He would have bungled it.

  I did not want to kill you!

  You to be killed! What were you then? only a thing called ‘life’ —

  Something that should have been mine, as I felt then.

  Most people would not have felt that compunction

  If they felt no other. But I wanted you!

  If that had happened, I knew I should have carried

  Death in life, death through lifetime, death in my womb.

  I felt that you were in some way mine!

  And that in any case I should have no other child.

  HARRY. And have me. That is the way things happen.

  Everything is true in a different sense,

  A sense that would have seemed meaningless before.

  Everything tends towards reconciliation

  As the stone falls, as the tree falls. And in the end

  That is the completion which at the beginning

  Would have seemed the ruin.

  Perhaps my life has only been a dream

  Dreamt through me by the minds of others. Perhaps

  I only dreamt I pushed her.

  AGATHA. So I had supposed. What of it?

  What we have written is not a story of detection,

  Of crime and punishment, but of sin and expiation.

  It is possible that you have not known what sin

  You shall expiate, or whose, or why. It is certain

  That the knowledge of it must precede the expiation.

  It is possible that sin may strain and struggle

  In its dark instinctive birth, to come to consciousness

  And so find expurgation. It is possible

  You are the consciousness of your unhappy family,

  Its bird sent flying through the purgatorial flame.

  Indeed it is possible. You may learn hereafter,

  Moving alone through flames of ice, chosen

  To resolve the enchantment under which we suffer.

  HARRY. Look, I do not know why,

  I feel happy for a moment, as if I had come home.

  It is quite irrational, but now

  I feel quite happy, as if happiness

  Did not consist in getting what one wanted

  Or in getting rid of what can’t be got rid of

  But in a different vision. This is like an end.

  AGATHA. And a beginning. Harry, my dear,

  I feel very tired, as only the old feel.

  The young feel tired at the end of an action —

  The old, at the beginning. It is as if

  I had been living all these years upon my capital,

  Instead of earning my spiritual income daily:

  And I am old, to start again to make my living.

  HARRY. But you are not unhappy, just now?

  AGATHA. What does the word mean?

  There’s relief from a burden that I carried,

  And exhaustion at the moment of relief.

  The burden’s yours now, yours

  The burden of all the family. And I am a little frightened.

  HARRY. You, frightened! I can hardly imagine it.

  I wish I had known — but that was impossible.

  I only now begin to have some understanding

  Of you, and of all of us. Family affection

  Was a kind of formal obligation, a duty

  Only noticed by its neglect. One had that part to play.

  After such training, I could endure, these ten years,

  Playing a part that had been imposed upon me;

  And I returned to find another one made ready —

  The book laid out, lines underscored, and the costume

  Ready to be put on. But it is very odd:

  When other people seemed so strong, their apparent strength

  Stifled my decision. Now I see

  I might even become fonder of my mother —

  More compassionate at least — by understanding.

  But she would not like that. Now I see

  I have been wounded in a war of phantoms,

  Not by human beings — they have no more power than I.

  The things I thought were real are shadows, and the real

  Are what I thought were private shadows. O that awful privacy

  Of the insane mind! Now I can live in public.

  Liberty is a different kind of pain from prison.

  AGATHA. I only looked through the little door

  When the sun was shining on the rose-garden:

  And heard in the distance tiny voices

  And then a black raven flew over.

  And then I was only my own feet walking

  Away, down a concrete corridor

  In a dead air. Only feet walking

  And sharp heels scraping. Over and under

  Echo and noise of feet.

  I was only the feet, and the eye

  Seeing the feet: the unwinking eye

  Fixing the movement. Over and under.

  HARRY. In and out, in an endless drift

  Of shrieking forms in a circular desert

  Weaving with contagion of putrescent embraces

  On dissolving bone. In and out, the movement

  Until the chain broke, and I was left

  Under the single eye above the desert.

  AGATHA. Up and down, through the stone passages

  Of an immense and empty hospital

  Pervaded by a smell of disinfectant,

  Looking straight ahead, passing barred windows.

  Up and down. Until the chain breaks.

  HARRY. To and fro, dragging my feet

  Among inner shadows in the smoky wilderness,

  Trying to avoid the clasping branches

  And the giant lizard. To and fro.

  Until the chain breaks.

  The chain breaks,

  The wheel stops, and the noise of machinery,

  And the desert is cleared, under the judicial sun

  Of the final eye, and the awful evacuation

  Cleanses.

  I was not there, you were not there, only our phantasms

  And what did not happen is as true as what did happen

  O my dear, and you walked through the little door

  And I ran to meet you in the rose-garden.

  AGATHA. This is the next moment. This is the beginning.

  We do not pass twice through the same door

  Or return to the door through which we did not pass.

  I have seen the first stage: relief from what happened

  Is also relief from that unfulfilled craving

  Flattered in sleep, and deceived in waking.

  You have a long journey.

  HARRY. Not yet! not yet! this is the first time that I have been free

  From the ring of ghosts with joined hands, from the pursuers,

  And come into a quiet place.

  Why is it
so quiet?

  Do you feel a kind of stirring underneath the air?

  Do you? don’t you? a communication, a scent

  Direct to the brain … but not just as before,

  Not quite like, not the same …

  [The EUMENIDES appear]

  and this time

  You cannot think that I am surprised to see you.

  And you shall not think that I am afraid to see you.

  This time, you are real, this time, you are outside me,

  And just endurable. I know that you are ready,

  Ready to leave Wishwood, and I am going with you.

  You followed me here, where I thought I should escape you —

  No! you were already here before I arrived.

  Now I see at last that I am following you,

  And I know that there can be only one itinerary

  And one destination. Let us lose no time. I will follow.

  [The curtains close. AGATHA goes to the window, in a somnambular fashion, and opens the curtains, disclosing the empty embrasure. She steps into the place which the EUMENIDES had occupied.]

  AGATHA. A curse comes to being

  As a child is formed.

  In both, the incredible

  Becomes the actual

  Without our intention

  Knowing what is intended.

  A curse is like a child, formed

  In a moment of unconsciousness

  In an accidental bed

  Or under an elder tree

  According to the phase

  Of the determined moon.

  A curse is like a child, formed

  To grow to maturity:

  Accident is design

  And design is accident

  In a cloud of unknowing.

  O my child, my curse,

  You shall be fulfilled:

  The knot shall be unknotted

  And the crooked made straight.

  [She moves back into the room]

  What have I been saying? I think I was saying

  That you have a long journey. You have nothing to stay for.

  Think of it as like a children’s treasure hunt:

  Here you have found a clue, hidden in the obvious place.

  Delay, and it is lost. Love compels cruelty

  To those who do not understand love.

  What you have wished to know, what you have learned

  Mean the end of a relation, make it impossible.

  You did not intend this, I did not intend it,

  No one intended, but … You must go.

  HARRY. Shall we ever meet again?

  AGATHA. Shall we ever meet again?

  And who will meet again? Meeting is for strangers.

  Meeting is for those who do not know each other.

  HARRY. I know that I have made a decision

  In a moment of clarity, and now I feel dull again.

  I only know that I made a decision

  Which your words echo. I am still befouled,

  But I know there is only one way out of defilement —

  Which leads in the end to reconciliation.

  And I know that I must go.

  AGATHA. You must go.

  [Enter AMY]

  AMY. What are you saying to Harry? He has only arrived,

  And you tell him to go?

  AGATHA. He shall go.

  AMY. He shall go? and who are you to say he shall go?

  I think I know well enough why you wish him to go.

  AGATHA. I wish nothing. I only say what I know must happen.

  AMY. You only say what you intended to happen.

  HARRY. Oh, mother,

  This is not to do with Agatha, any more than with the rest of you.

  My advice has come from quite a different quarter,

  But I cannot explain that to you now. Only be sure

  That I know what I am doing, and what I must do,

  And that it is the best thing for everybody.

  But at present, I cannot explain it to anyone:

  I do not know the words in which to explain it —

  That is what makes it harder. You must just believe me,

  Until I come again.

  AMY. But why are you going?

  HARRY. I can only speak

  And you cannot hear me. I can only speak

  So you may not think I conceal an explanation,

  And to tell you that I would have liked to explain.

  AMY. Why should Agatha know, and I not be allowed to?

  HARRY. I do not know whether Agatha knows

  Or how much she knows. Any knowledge she may have —

  It was not I who told her … All this year,

  This last year, I have been in flight

  But always in ignorance of invisible pursuers.

  Now I know that all my life has been a flight

  And phantoms fed upon me while I fled. Now I know

  That the last apparent refuge, the safe shelter,

  That is where one meets them. That is the way of spectres …

  AMY. There is no one here!

  No one, but your family!

  HARRY. And now I know

  That my business is not to run away, but to pursue,

  Not to avoid being found, but to seek.

  I would not have chosen this way, had there been any other!

  It is at once the hardest thing, and the only thing possible.

  Now they will lead me. I shall be safe with them;

  I am not safe here.

  AMY. So you will run away.

  AGATHA. In a world of fugitives

  The person taking the opposite direction

  Will appear to run away.

  AMY. I was speaking to Harry.

  HARRY. It is very hard, when one has just recovered sanity,

  And not yet assured in possession, that is when

  One begins to seem the maddest to other people.

  It is hard for you too, mother, it is indeed harder,

  Not to understand.

  AMY. Where are you going?

  HARRY. I shall have to learn. That is still unsettled.

  I have not yet had the precise directions.

  Where does one go from a world of insanity?

  Somewhere on the other side of despair.

  To the worship in the desert, the thirst and deprivation,

  A stony sanctuary and a primitive altar,

  The heat of the sun and the icy vigil,

  A care over lives of humble people,

  The lesson of ignorance, of incurable diseases.

  Such things are possible. It is love and terror

  Of what waits and wants me, and will not let me fall.

  Let the cricket chirp. John shall be the master.

  All I have is his. No harm can come to him.

  What would destroy me will be life for John,

  I am responsible for him. Why I have this election

  I do not understand. It must have been preparing always,

  And I see it was what I always wanted. Strength demanded

  That seems too much, is just strength enough given.

  I must follow the bright angels.

  [Exit]

  Scene III

  AMY, AGATHA

  AMY. I was a fool, to ask you again to Wishwood;

  But I thought, thirty-five years is long, and death is an end,

  And I thought that time might have made a change in Agatha —