THE (UNDERLINED) WASTE LAND

NOTICE

This is a crude cut-up of lines that I liked enough to underline in

T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land And Other Poems. If anything, the exercise

says more about The Reader than The Writer. Line #s have been provided

for easy citation. O Workshop'd Sarcasms!

DAN.

*

"THE (UNDERLINED) WASTE LAND"

In a minute there is time

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

I have measured out my life in coffee spoons;

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.

10

It is impossible to say just what I mean!

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.

* * *

With the other masquerades

That time resumes, 20

One thinks of all the hands

That are raising dingy shades

In a thousand furnished rooms.

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 30

INFINITELY SUFFERING THING.

Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;

The worlds revolve like ancient women

Gathering fuel in vacant lots.

* * *

Thou hast nor youth nor age

But as it were an after dinner sleep 40

Dreaming of both.

A dull head among windy spaces.

After such knowledge, what forgiveness?

Guides us by vanities.

Till the refusal propagates a fear. Think

Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural Vices 50

Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues

Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.

These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.

Tenants of the house,

Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season.

* * *

Maculate 60

The host with someone indistinct

Converses at the door apart,

The nightingales are singing near

The Convent of the Sacred Heart,

And sang within the bloody wood

When Agamemnon cried aloud,

And let their liquid siftings fall

To stain the stiff dishonoured shroud.

[Note: Have I just been shut out? 70

Is all this language/meaning

Unavailable to me b/c of my

Birthday?]

* * *

I.

Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:

One must be so careful these days.

80

I had not thought death had undone so many.

II.

He'll want to know what you done with that money he gave you to get yourself some teeth.

HURRY UP/ITS TIME

III.

She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,

And puts a record on the gramophone. 90

IV.

And the profit and loss.

V.

But dry sterile thunder without rain

"Datta, dayadhvam, damyata"

(Give, Sympathize, Control).

434. Shantih. Repeated as here, a formal ending to 100

an Upanishad. "The Peace which passeth understanding"

is our equivalent to this word.

* * *

I no longer strive to strive towards such things

Why should I mourn

The VANISHED POWER OF THE USUAL REIGN?

[Note: Dead-On.]

110

BECAUSE I KNOW THAT TIME IS ALWAYS TIME

And place is always and only place

And what is actual is actual only for one time

And only for one place

I rejoice that things are as they are and

I renounce the blessed face.

Speech without word and Word of no speech.

This is the land which ye 120

Shall divide by lot. And neither division nor unity

Matters. THIS IS THE LAND. WE HAVE OUR INHERITANCE.

[Note: How Many times are stairs mentioned?

And, he's always coming down them...]

O my people.

Wavering between the profit and the loss

This is the time of tension between dying and birth

And let my cry come unto Thee. 130

* * *

This: were we led all that way for

Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,

We had evidence and

no doubt. I had seen birth and death,

But had thought they were different;

this Birth was

Hard and bitter agony for us, 140

like Death, our death.

We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,

But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,

With an alien people clutching their gods.

I should be glad of another death.

* * *

Iron thoughts came with me

And go with me: 150

" "

* * *

O perpetual revolution of configured stars,

O perpetual recurrence of determined seasons,

O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying!

The endless cycle of idea and action,

Endless invention, endless experiment,

160

All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,

But nearness to death no nearer to G O D.

Where is the Life we have lost living?

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?

Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries

Bring us farther from G O D and nearer to Dust. 170

In the City, we need no bells:

...the country now is only fit for picnics.

The God-shaken,

In whom is the truth inborn.

The applause of all or the love of none.

What has been done of good, you find explanations

To satisfy the RATIONAL and ENLIGHTENED MIND. 180

Where the word is unspoken,

We will build with new speech

From farther away, they are answered by voices of the U N E M P L O Y E D .

No man has hired us.

Our life is unwelcome, our death Unmentioned in 'The Times'.

Chant of W O R K M E N again.

In this street 190

There is no beginning, no movement, no peace and no end

But noise without speech, food without taste...

WE BUILD THE MEANING:

Or shall the Visible Church go on to conquer the World?

In our rhythm of earthly life we tire of light.

We are glad when the day ends, when the play ends;

And ecstasy is too much pain.

We tire of distraction or concentration, we sleep and are glad to sleep,

CONTROLLED BY THE RHYTHM OF BLOOD 200

O Light Invisible!

O LIGHT!