Half-past one,
the street lamp sputtered,
the street lamp muttered,
the street lamp said, “Regard that woman
who hesitates towards you in the light of the door
which opens on her like a grin.
You see the border of her dress
is torn and stained with sand,
and you see the corner of her eye
twists like a crooked pin.”
The memory throws up high and dry
a crowd of twisted things;
a twisted branch upon the beach
eaten smooth, and polished
as if the world gave up
the secret of its skeleton,
stiff and white.
A broken spring in a factory yard,
rust that clings to the form that the strength has left
hard and curled and ready to snap.
Half-past two,
the street lamp said,
“Remark the cat which flattens itself in the gutter,
slips out its tongue
and devours a morsel of rancid butter.”
So the hand of a child, automatic,
slipped out and pocketed a toy
that was running along the quay.
I could see nothing behind that child’s eye.
I have seen eyes in the street
trying to peer through lighted shutters,
and a crab one afternoon in a pool,
an old crab with barnacles on his back,
gripped the end of a stick which I held him.
Half-past three,
the lamp sputtered,
the lamp muttered in the dark.
The lamp hummed:
“Regard the moon,
la lune ne garde aucune rancune,
she winks a feeble eye,
she smiles into corners.
She smoothes the hair of the grass.
The moon has lost her memory.
A washed-out smallpox cracks her face,
her hand twists a paper rose,
that smells of dust and old Cologne,
she is alone
with all the old nocturnal smells
that cross and cross across her brain.”
The reminiscence comes
of sunless dry geraniums
and dust in crevices,
smells of chestnuts in the streets,
and female smells in shuttered rooms,
and cigarettes in corridors
and cocktail smells in bars.”
The lamp said,
“Four o’clock,
here is the number on the door.
Memory!
You have the key,
the little lamp spreads a ring on the stair,
mount.
The bed is open; the tooth-brush hangs on the wall,
put your shoes at the door, sleep, prepare for life.”
The last twist of the knife.
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock1
S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.
Let us go then, you and I,
when the evening is spread out against the sky
like a patient etherized upon a table;
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 window-panes,
the yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle
on the window-panes
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?
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;
I have seen the moment of my greatnes
s 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 toward 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.
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.
Hysteria1
As she laughed I was aware of becoming involved in her laughter and
being part of it, until her teeth
were only accidental stars with a talent for squad-drill.
I was drawn in by short gasps, inhaled at
each momentary recovery,
lost finally in the dark caverns of her throat,
bruised by the ripple of
unseen muscles. An elderly waiter
with trembling hands
was hurriedly spreading a pink and white checked cloth
over the rusty green iron table, saying:
“If the lady and gentleman wish to take their
tea in the garden,
if the lady and gentleman wish to take their tea
in the garden…”
I decided that if
the shaking of her breasts could be stopped,
some of the fragments of the afternoon might be
collected, and I concentrated my attention
with careful subtlety to this end.
Anna Akhmatova (1889 – 1966)
ReQuiem – Instead of a Preface2
Translated by Lenore Mayherw
In the terrible years of Yezhovism I spent seventeen months standing in
line in front of the Leningrad prisons. One day someone thought he
recognized me. Then, a woman with bluish lips who was behind me and
to whom my name meant nothing came out of the torpor to which we
were all accustomed and said, softly (for we spoke only in whispers),
“—And that, could you describe that?”
And I said, “Yes, I can.”
And then a sort of smile slid across what had been her face.
April 1, 1957
Leningrad
Archibald MacLeish (1892 – 1982)
Ars Poetica1
A poem should be palpable and mute
as a globed fruit,
dumb
as old medallions to the thumb,
silent as the sleeve-worn stone
of casement ledges where the moss has grown—
a poem should be wordless
as the flight of birds.
…
A poem should be motionless in time
as the moon climbs,
leaving, as the moon releases
twig by twig the night-entangled trees,
leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,
memory by memory the mind—
a poem should be motionless in time
as the moon climbs.
…
A poem should be equal to:
not true.
For all the history of grief
an empty doorway and a maple leaf.
For love
the leaning grasses and two lights above the sea—
a poem should not mean
but be.
Not Marble nor the Gilded Monuments1
The praisers of women
in their proud and beautiful poems,
naming the grave mouth and the hair and the eyes,
boasted those they loved should be forever remembered:
these were lies.
The words sound
but the face in the Istrian sun is forgotten.
The poet speaks but to her dead ears no more.
The sleek throat is gone—
and the breast that was troubled to listen:
shadow from door.
Therefore I will not praise your knees
nor your fine walking
telling you men shall remember your name as long
as lips move or breath is spent or the iron of English
rings from a tongue.
I shall say you were young,
and your arms straight, and your mouth scarlet:
I shall say you will die and none will remember you:
your arms change,
and none remember the swish of your garments,
nor the click of your shoe.
Not with my hand’s strength, not with the difficult labor
springing the obstinate words
to the bones of your breast
and the stubborn line to your young stride
and the breath to your breathing
and the beat to your haste
shall I prevail on the hearts of unborn men
to remember.
(What is a dead girl but a shadowy ghost
or a dead man’s voice but a distant and vain affirmation
like dream words most)
Therefore I will not speak
of the undying glory of women.
I will say you were young and straight and your skin fair
and you stood in the door and the sun was a shadow of leaves on your
shoulders
and a leaf on your hair—
I will not speak of the famous beauty of dead women:
I will say the shape of a leaf lay once on your hair.
Till the world ends and the eyes are out
and the mouths broken.
Look! It is there!
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 – 1950)
First Fig1
My candle burns at both ends;<
br />
it will not last the night;
but ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
it gives a lovely light!
Wilfred Owen (1893 – 1918)
Dulce et Decorum Est1
“Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
knock-kneed, coughing like hags,
we cursed through sludge,
till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
and towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
but limped on, blood shod. All went lame; all blind;
drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
of gas shells dropping softly behind.
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling,
fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
but someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
and flound’ring like a man in fire or lime …
dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
as under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
he plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
behind the wagon that we flung him in,
and watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
his hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
if you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
my friend, you would not tell with such high zest
to children ardent for some desperate glory,
the old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
pro patria mori.”
Lucian Blaga (1895 – 1961)
I will not crush the world’s corolla of wonders1
I will not crush the world’s corolla of wonders
and I will not kill
with reason
the mysteries I meet along my way
in flowers, eyes, lips, and graves.
The light of others
drowns the deep magic hidden
in the profound darkness.
I increase the world’s enigma
with my light
much as the moon with its white beams
does not diminish but increases
the shimmering mystery of night—
The Giant Book of Poetry Page 33
