 The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot Read for LibriVox.org by Michael Dowling The Burial of the Dead April is the cruelest 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 Stanbeck say. With the shower of rain, we stopped in the Colonnade and went on in sunlight into the Hofgarten and drank coffee and talked for an hour. Bingark, eine Russin, Stam aus L'taan, echt Deutsch. And when we were children, staying at the Archdukes, my cousins, he took me out on a sled and I was frightened. He said, very, very, 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 home full of dust. Frisch feet der Rinde, der Heibatzu, bei Nierisch Kind, vor Veilers Du. He gave me Hyacinth 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. Erd und leer das Meer. Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyant, 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 guard, the drowned Phoenician sailor. Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look, here is Belladonna, the lady at the rocks, the lady of situations. Here is the man with three staves, and here the wheel, and here is the one I had 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 Dimus's 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. Size, short and infrequent, were exhaled, and each man fixed his eyes before his feet, blowed up the hill and down King William Street, to where St. Mary Woolnoth kept the oars with a dead sound on the final stroke of nine. There I saw one I knew and stopped him crying. Stetson, you who are with me in the ships at Miley, 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 its friend to men, or with his nails you'll dig it up again. You. Hypocrite lecture. M'en semblable. Mon frère. A game of chess. The chair she sat in like a burnish 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 seven branched candelabra, reflecting light upon the table, as the glitter of her jewels rose to meet it, from satin cases poured in rich profusion, and vials of ivory and coloured glass, unstoppable, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes, unwind, powdered, or liquid, troubled, confused, and drowned the scents in odours, stirred by the air that freshened from the window, these ascended in fattening the prolonged candle flames, flung their smoke into the lacquery area, staring the pattern on the coffered ceiling. Huge seamwood fed with copper, burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone, in which sad light a carved dolphin swam. Above the antique mantle was displayed, as though a window gave upon the sylvan scene, the change of filler mail, by the barbarous king so rudely forced, yet there the nightingale filled all the desert with inviolable voice, and still she cried, but still the world pursues, jug jug, the dirty ears. And other withered stumps of time were told upon the walls, staring forms leaned out, gleaning, 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, and would be savagely still. 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 rat's 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 that those are pearls that were his eyes. Are you alive or not? Is there nothing in your head? But, oh, oh, oh, that shakes me hearing and 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 little as eyes, and waiting for a knock upon the door. When Lill's husband got de-mobbed, I said, I didn't mince my words, I said to him himself, Hurry up, please, it's time. Now, Albert's coming back, make yourself a bit smart. You'll want to know what you've done with that money he gave you, to get herself some teeth. He did. I was there. I left them all out, Lill and Gil, and I 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 for four years, he wants a good time. And if you don't give it to him, there's others will, I said. I was there, she said. Something like that, I said. Then I'll know who to thank, she said, and give me a straight look. Hurry up, please, it's 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 at her only thirty-one. I can't help it, she said, pulling a long face. He sent pills I took to bring it off, she said. She said five already, and nearly died of a young George. The chemist said it would be all right, but I've never been the same. You are a proper fool, I said. 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, it's time. Well, that Sunday Albert was home. They had a hot gammon, and they asked me into dinner to get the beauty of it hot. Hurry up, please, it's time. Hurry up, please, it's time. Good night, Bill. Good night, Lou. Good night, May. Good night. Ta-da. Good night. Good night. Good night, ladies. Good night. Sweet ladies. Good night. Good night. The fire sermon. The river's tent is broken. The vast fingers of leaf clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed. Sweet thames are unsoftly 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 lemon 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 a rattle of the bones and chuckled 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 gas-house, 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 rats 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, and soon shall Brighton, Mrs. Porter, and on her daughter, they wash their feet in soda-water. Et eux se voient d'enfants chantant dans la coupelle. Twit, twit, twit, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug. So rudely forced, terru, unreal city. Under the brown fog of a winter noon, Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant, shavened with a pocketful of currants, CIF 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, brings the sailor home from sea. The typist, home at tea-time, 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 clock, 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 are still 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, who foresuffered a wall, enacted on this same divan or bed, I, who have sat by thebes below the wall, 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 Dan, and I'm glad it's over. When lovely woman stoopes to folly and paces about her room again alone, she smooths 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. Oh, city, city, I can sometimes hear, beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street, the pleasant whining of a mandolin, and a clatter and a chatter from within, where fishmen lounge at noon, where the walls of Magnus Martyr hold, inexplicable splendour of Vionian white and gold. The river sweats oil and tar, the barges drift with the turning tide, red sails white, tillyward swing on the heavy spar, the barges wash, drifting logs, down Greenwich Reach, past the Isle of Dogs. Walla-la, liar, walla-la-la, liar-la-la. Elizabeth and Lester, beating oars, the stone was formed, a gilded shell, red and gold, the brisks swell, ripple both shores, south-west wind, carried downstream, the peal of bells, white towers, walla-la-la, liar, walla-la-la, liar-la-la. Trams and dusty trees, ivory 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, broken fingernails of dirty hands, my people, humble people who expect nothing. Lala! To Carthage then I came, burning, burning, burning, burning. O Lord, thou pluckest me out, O Lord, thou pluckest, burning. Death by water, fleabass the finition, 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 due, O you who turn the wheel and look to Winwood, consider Fleabass, who is once handsome and tall as you. What the thunder said, after the torchlight 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 and spring over distant mountains. He who was living is now dead, we who were living are now dying, with the little patience. Here is no water but only rock, rock and no water, and the sandy road, living 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. There were only water amongst the rock, dead mountain mouth of curious 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 mud-cracked houses. If there were water and no rock, there were rock and also water and water a spring a pool among the rock. 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 were only you and I together, but when I look ahead of the white road there is always another one walking beside you, gliding, wrapped 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 down with down a blackened wall and upside down in air were towers tolling reminiscent bells that kept the hours and voices singing out of empty systems 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 roof tree Kokoriko, Kokoriko 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 Data, what have we given my friend blood shaking my heart the awful daring of a moment's surrender which in age of prudence can never attract 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 Daiadvam 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 which confirms a prison only at nightfall ethereal rumours revive for a moment broken Coriolanus Da Damyata the boat responded gaily to the hand expert with sail and ore the sea was calm your heart would have responded gaily when invited beating obedient to controlling hands I sat upon the shore fishing to the arid plain behind me shall I at least set my lands in order? London bridge is falling down falling down falling down poe s'escoze nel foco gae ni affina gundo fia muti kelledon os swolo swolo le pras takedin la le tour a bulli these fragments I have short against my ruins why then I'll fit you here on a most mad again data dyadvam Damyata shanti shanti end of poem this recording is in the public domain winter kept us warm covering earth in forgetful snow feeding a little life with dried tubers summer surprised us coming over the stanbergersy with a shower of rain we stopped in the colonnade and went awed in sunlight into the hoofgarten and drank coffee and talked for an hour bengar khanarusan bengar khanarusan bengar khanarusan starmas litaun echt Deutsch and when we were children staying at the arch dukes my cousins 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 fish veit der vint der heimat zu mein irische kind verfeilest du he gave me hyacins first a year ago they called me the hyacinth girl yet when we came back 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 Old Unglier Dismir Madame Sosostris famous clairvoyant had a bad cold nevertheless is known to be the wisest woman in Europe in the back 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 feared 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 St. Mary Woolnuth 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 my lay 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 lectur mon seblable mon frère part two a game of chess the chair she sat in like a burnished throne load on the marble where the glass held up by standards rock with fruited vines from which a golden cupidon peeped out another hit his eyes behind his wing doubled the flames of seven branch 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 colored glass lurked her strange synthetic perfumes unguent powdered or liquid troubled confused and drowned the scents and odors stirred by the air that freshened from the window these ascended in fattening the prolonged candle flames flung their smoke into the laqueria stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling huge sea wood fed with copper green and orange framed by the colored stone in which sad light a carbid dolphin swam above the antique mantel was displayed as though a window gave upon the silvan 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 to dirty years 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 it's 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 rat sally where the dead men lost their bones what is that noise the wind under the door what is the wind doing nothing again nothing do you know nothing do you see nothing do you remember nothing I remember those of pearls that were his eyes are you alive or not is there nothing in your head but ooh that shakespeary and 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 he asked my words I said to her myself hurry up please it's time now Albert's coming back make yourself a bit smart he'll want to know what you've 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 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 of that I said then I'll know who to thank she said and gave me a straight look hurry up please it's time if you don't like it you can get on with it I said others can pick and choose if you can't 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 said 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 it's time well that Sunday Albert was home they had a hot gammon and they asked me into dinner to get the beauty of it hot hurry up please it's time hurry up please it's time good night Bill good night Lou good night May good night ta ta good night good night good night ladies good night good night part three 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 run softly till I end my song the river bears no empty bottles sandwich papers silk anchor chips 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 Lehman 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 gas house using 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 the little low dry garret rattled by the rat's foot only ear to ear 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 oh the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter and daughter, daughter they washed their feet in soda water ay, oh, ces voix d'enfant chante dans la copole twit, twit, twit jug, jug, jug, jug, jug, jug jug, jug, jug so rudely forced to rue unreal city under the brown fog of a winter noon Mr. Eugenides the Smyrna merchant unshaven with a pocket full of currents see if London documents at sight ask 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 ay, teresias though blind, throbbing between two lives 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 tea time 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 ay, teresias old man with wrinkled dugs perceived the scene and foretold the rest ay, too, awaited the expected guest he, the young man carbonuncular 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 bread for an air the time is now propitious as he guesses the meal is ended she is bored and tired endeavors to engage her in caresses which still are unreproved if undesired flushed and decided he assaults at once exploring hands encounter no defense his vanity requires no response and makes a welcome of indifference and ay, teresias have heard all enacted on the same divan or bed ay, who have sat by thebes below the wall and walked among the lowest of the dead bestows one final patronizing 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-form thought to pass well, now that's done and I'm glad it's over when lovely woman stoop to folly and paces about her room again alone she smooths her hair with automatic hand and puts a record on the gramophone the music crept by me upon the waters and along the strand up queen victoria street oh, city, city, I can sometimes hear beside a public bar in lower tem street the pleasant whining a mandolin and a clatter and a chatter from within where fishmen lounge at noon where the walls of magnus martyr hold inexplicable splendor 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 past the isle of dogs way-a-la-la-lay-ah wall-a-la-la lay-a-la-la Elizabeth and Leicester beating oars the stern was formed a gilded shell red and gold the brisk swell rippled both shores southwest wind carried downstream the peel of bells white towers way-a-la-la lay-a wall-a-la lay-a-la-la trams and dusty trees Highbury bore me Richmond and Q. 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 comet what should I resent on Moorgate's 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 oh lord thou pluckest me out oh lord thou pluckest burning part four death by water Fleabest the Phoenician a fortnight dead forgot the cry of gulls and the deep seas swell and the prophet in loss a current under sea picked his bones and whispers as he rose and fell he passed stages of his age and youth entering the whirlpool Gentile or Jew or you who turn the wheel and look to windward consider Fleabest who was once handsome and tall as you 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 in place 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 in 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 curious teeth that cannot spit 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 mud-cracked 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 the dry grass singing but sound of water over a rock where the hermit thrush sings in the pine trees drip drop drip 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 another one walking beside you gliding wrapped 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 down where 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 roof tree coco rico coco rico in a flash of lightning then a damp gust bringing rain gango was sunken and the limp leaves waited for rain while the black clouds gathered far distant over hem event the jungle crouched, humped in silence then spoke the thunder da data 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 dayan fam 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 ethereal rumors revive for a moment a broken choreography da damyata the boat responded gaily to the hand expert with sail and ore 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 plane behind me shall I at least set my lands in order London bridge is falling down falling down falling down the coasting cuando fiam the Prince wearing a turaboli these fragments I have shored against my ruins why then heal fit you hironimo's mad again dayan fam damyata shanti shanti The Wasteland, by T. S. Eliot, read for LibriVox.org by Karen Savage. The Burial of the Dead. April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain. Water kept us warm, covering earth in forgetful snow, feeding a little life with dried tubers. Summer surprised us, coming over the Steinberger See, 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, Stam aus Litauen echt Deutsch. And when we were children, staying at the Archdukes, my cousins, 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 weit der Wind, der Heimat zu, mein Irish Kind, wo weilest du? You gave me hyacinth 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. Ord und leer das mir. Madame Sosostris, flameless clairvoyant, 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 as 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, feared death by water. I see crowds of people walking round in a ring. Thank you. If you see, dear Mrs. Equitone, tell her I'd 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. Size, 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 St. Mary Walneth 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 Miley. 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. A game of chess. The church he 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 cubitum peeped out. Another hid his eyes behind his wing. Doubled the flames of seven-branched 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, unstoppable, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes, unguent, powdered, or liquid troubled, confused and drowned the sense in odours. Led by the air that freshened from the window, these ascended in flattening the prolonged candle-flames, flung their smoke into the liqueuria, 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 lighter-covered dolphin swam. Above the antique mantel was displayed, as though a window gave upon the silver scene, the change of filamel by the barbarous king so rudely forced. Said there was 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 fire-light, under the brush, her hair spread out in fiery points, glowed into words, then would be savagely still. My nerves are bad to-night. 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're in rat's 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 pearls that were his eyes. Are you alive or not? Is there nothing in your head? But oh! That Shakespearean 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 to-morrow? What shall we ever do? The hot water at ten, and if it rains a closed car at four, you 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, it's time. Now Albert's coming back, make yourself a bit smart. He'll want to know what you've 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 an eye set, he said. I swear I can't bear to look at you. A no more can't eye, 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 of that, I said. Then I'll know who to thank, she said, and give me a straight look. Hurry up, please, it's 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're 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, it's time. Well that Sunday Albert was home they had a hot gammon, and they asked me into dinner to get the beauty of it hot. Hurry up, please, it's time. Hurry up, please, it's time. Good night, Bill, good night, Lou, good night, May, good night, ta-ta, good night, good night, good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night. 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 have departed. Sweet Thames runs 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 laymen I sat down and wept. Sweet Thames runs softly till I end my song. Sweet Thames runs 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 gas-house, 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 little low dry garret rattled by the rat's foot only, ear to ear. 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 oh, c'est voix d'enfant chantant de la coupole. Twit, twit, twit, jug, jug, jug, jug, jug, jug, so rudely forced, terror. Unreal city, under the brown fog of a winter noon, Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant, unshaven with a pocket full of currents, CIF London, documents at sight, asked me in Demotic French to luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel, followed by a weekend at the Métropole. 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 tea-time, 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-agents' 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 the same divan or bed, I who have sat by thieves 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-form thought to pass. Well, now that's done, and I'm glad it's over. When lovely woman stoopes to folly and paces about her room again alone, she smooths 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—oh, city, city!—I can sometimes hear beside a public bar and lower Thames Street the pleasant whining of Amanda Lynn, and a clatter and a chatter from within, where the 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 bargers drift with the turning tide, red sails wide to leeward, swing on the heavy spar. The bargers wash drifting logs down Greenwich Reach, past the Isle of Dogs, where lala laya, wa lala laya lala. Elizabeth and Lester, beating oars, the stern was formed, a gilded shell red and gold, the brisk swell ribbled both shores, south-west wind carried downstream, the peal of bells, white towers, wa lala laya, wa lala laya lala. Trams and dusty trees, hybrid bore me, Richmond and Cuen did me. By Richmond I raised my knees supine on the floor of a narrow canoe. My feet were 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's sands I can connect nothing with nothing, the broken fingernails of dirty hands, my people humble people who expect nothing, lala. To Carthage then I came, burning, burning, burning, o Lord, thou plucked me out, o Lord, thou plucked, burning. Death by water. Fleebus the Phoenician, a fortnight dead, forgot the cry of gulls and the deep seas swell and the prophet 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 well-paw. Gentile, o Jew, o you who turn the wheel and look to windward, consider Fleebus, who was once handsome and tall as you. The thunder said. After the torchlight read on sweaty faces, after the frosty silence in the gardens, after the agony in stony places, the shouting and the crying, prison and place and reverberation of thunder of spring over distant mountains, he who was living is now dead. We who were living are now dying with the little patience. There is no water but only rock. Rock and no water and the sandy road, the road winding above among the mountains, but 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 mud-cracked 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 the 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 was 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 was always another one walking beside you, guiding wrapped 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 systems 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 roof-tree, cockerico, cockerico, in a flash of lightning, than 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 for thunder. Da. Da. Da. Da. Da. Da. Da. Da. Da. Da. Da. Da. Da. Da. Da. Da. Da. Da. Da. Da. Da. Da. Da. Da. Da. Da. Da. Da. Da. Da. Da. Da. Da. Da. Da. Da. Da. Da. Da. Da. Da. Damiata. 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. The Wasteland by T.S. Elliot. Red for LibriVox, dot org by Corey Snow. July 24, 2008. Olympia, Washington. H-T-T-P colon slash slash w-w-w dot cyclometh dot com. Part 1. The Burial of the Dead. April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering earth and forgetful snow, feeding a little life with dried tubers. Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergese 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. B-N-G-R-K-N-N-R-S-N-S-T-A-L-M-S-L-T-A-N-E-H-D-O-T-S. And when we were children staying at the Archdukes, my cousins, 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. You gave me hyacinth 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. Old Unlier Dasmeer Madame Sassastres, famous clairvoyant, 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 Bella Donna, 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, thea death by water. I see crowds of people walking round in a ring. Thank you. If you see, dear Mrs. Ecouton, 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. Size, 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 St. Mary Walneth kept the hours with a dead sound on the final stroke of nine. There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying, Statson, you who were with me in the ships at my lair, 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 lectur, mon symbolable, mon frere. Part 2 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 seven-branched 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 unstoppable, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes, unjoint, 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 lecaria, 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 carved dolphin swam. Above the antique mantle was displayed, as though a window gave upon the sylvan scene, the change of filamel 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 fire-light, 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 rat's 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 oh, that Shakespearean 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 Leo's husband got demarbed, I said, I didn't mince my words. I said to her myself, hurry up, please, it's time. Now, Albert's coming back. Make yourself a bit smart. He'd want to know what you'd done with that money he gave you to get yourself some teeth. He did. I was there. You have them all out, Leo, 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, he's there, she said. Something of that, I said. Then I'll know who to thank, she said, and gave me a straight look. Hurry up, please, it's 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 peels I took to bring it off, she said. She's had five already. I nearly died of young George. The chemist said it would be all right, but I've never been the same. You are 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, it's time. Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had a hot gammon, and they asked me into dinner to get the beauty of it hot. Hurry up, please, it's time. Hurry up, please, it's time. Good night, Bill. Good night, Lou. Good night, May. Good night. Ta-ta. Good night. Good night. Good night, ladies. Good night, sweet ladies. Good night. Good night. Part 3 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 runs 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 Le Mans I sat down and wept. Sweet Thames runs softly till I end my song. Sweet Thames runs softly till I speak not loud or long. But at my back in a cold blast I hear the rattle of the bones, and chuckles 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 Del Canal, on a winter evening round behind the gas-house, 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, ear to ear. 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 washed their feet in soda water. Et au serre un d'enfant chantant dans la roue-pou. Twit, twit, twit, jug, jug, jug, jug, jug, jug, so rudely forced. Teru. Unreal city, under the brown fog of a winter noon, Mr. Eugenides, the smirna merchant, unshaven with a pocket full of currants, CIF London, documents at sight, asked me in Dematic French to luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel, followed by a weekend at the Metropolis. 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, Terecius, 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 tea-time 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, Terecius, 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, endeavors to engage her in caresses, which still are unreproved, if undesired. Flushed and decided, he assaults at once, exploring hands and counter no defence. His vanity requires no response and makes a welcome of indifference. And I, Terecius, have foresuffered all, enacted on the same divan or bed. I, who have sat by thebes below the wall and walked among the lowest of the dead, bestows on 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 smooths 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. Oh, city, city, I can sometimes hear beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street, the pleasant whining of a mandolin, 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. Two leewards swing on the heavy spar. The barges wash drifting logs down Greenwich Reach past the Isle of Dogs. Elizabeth and Leister beating oars. The stern was formed, a gilded shell, red and gold. The brisk swell rippled both shores. Southwest wind carried downstream, the peal of bells, white towers. Wa-la-la-la-la-la-ah! Wa-la-la-la-la-la-ah! Trams and dusty trees. Highbury bore me. Richmond and Q. undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees, supine on the floor of a narrow canoe. My feet hurt Murgate 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 Murgate's sands I can connect nothing with nothing. The broken fingernails of dirty hands. My people humble people who expect nothing. La-la-la! To Carthage then I came. Burning, burning, burning, burning. O Lord, thou pluckest me out! O Lord, thou pluckest burning! Part 4 Death by Water Fleabas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead, forgot the cry of Gauls and the deep seas' 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 Flavus, who was once handsome and tall as you. Part 5 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 in place 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. Part 6 Here is no water but only rock, rock and no water, and the sandy road, the road winding above 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 mud-cracked 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. 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 wrapped 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 were these 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 violent 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 roof-tree. Co-co-rico-co-co-rico! In a flash of lightning, then a damp gust bringing rain. Gunga 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! Da-ta! 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! Die out of them. 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 ethereal rumors revive for a moment a broken Corialanus. Da! Damjata! The boat responded gaily to the hand expert with sail and ore. 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 bridges falling down, falling down, falling down. Poise se scosque, no foco keg le offena. Quando fiamm ke o keledon, o swalo, swalo. La France d'acquotain à la tour abolie. These fragments I have shored against my ruins. Why then ill fit you, Heronimo's mad again. Da! Die out of them. Damjata! Shanti! Shanti! Shanti! End of poem. This recording is in the public domain. The Wasteland by T. S. Elliot. Read for LibriVox by Greg Bathon. The Wasteland. I saw with my own eyes the Sibyl at Cume, hanging in a jar. And when those boys said, Sibyl, what do you want? She answered, I want to die. Nam Sibylam quidem Cumes ego ipsi oculis meis, vidi en ampola pendere. Et cum illi quere disherent, Sibyla titeleis. Responde bat illa. Apollthanien tello, part one, The Burial of the Dead. April is the cruelest month, reading 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 St. Bergersee with a shower of rain. We stopped in the colonnade, And went on in sunlight into the Huffgarten, And drank coffee, And talked for an hour. Bingakaine russin, Stamm aus Litauen, echt Deutsch. And when we were children, Staying at the Archdukes, my cousins, 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. 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, Urd und leer das Meer. Madan so sostrisch, famous clairvoyant. Had the 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 a 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. Size, 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 St. Mary Wulnuth 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 Miley. That corpse you planted last year in your garden. Has it begun this 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 like her. Mon sable, mon frayre, part two. 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 cupidun peeped out, another hid his eyes behind his wing, doubled the flames of seven branched 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 scents in odours. Stirred by the air that freshened from the window, these ascended in fattening the prolonged candle flames, flung their smoke into the laquiaria, 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 carved dolphin swam. Above the antique mantel was displayed as though a window gave upon the sylvan scene the change of filumel 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 fire-light, 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 oh, oh, oh, oh, that Shakespearean 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 yours has been got demobbed, I said, I didn't miss my words, I said to her myself. Hurry up, please, it's time. Now, Albert's coming back. Make yourself a bit smart. He want to know what you've done for that money he gave you to get yourself some teeth. He did. I was there. You have them all out, Will, and get a nice set, he said. I swear I can't bear to look at you. And no more can I, I said. And think of poor Albert. He's been in the army for years. He wants a good time. And if you don't give it him. There's Albert as well, I said. Oh, is there, she said. Something of that, I said. Then I'll know to thank, she said, and give me a straight look. Hurry up, please, it's 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 a-shined, I said, to look so antique. And there are only thirty-one. There 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 a young George. Dick Hymn 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, it's time. Well, that Sunday Albert was home, and they had a hot gammon, and they asked me into dinner to get the beauty of it hot. Hurry up, please, it's time. Hurry up, please, it's time. Good night, Bill. Good night, Lou. Good night, May. Good night. Ta-da. Good night. Good night. Good night, ladies. Good night, sweet ladies. Good night. Good night. Part three. 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 runs softly till I end my song. The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers. So cankerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends, or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed. And their friends, the loitering airs of city directors, departed, have left no addresses. By the waters of lemon I sat down adwept. Sweet Thames runs softly till I end my song. Sweet Thames runs 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 gas-house, 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, ear to ear. 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. Oh, the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter, and on her daughter, they washed the feet in soda water. So rudely forced. Teru, on real city, under the brown fog of a winter noon. Mr. Eugenides, the smirner-merchant, unshaven, with a pocket full of currents—CIF London documents its site— 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, Tyreseus, 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 tea-time, 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, Tyreseus, 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, clock with one bold stare, one of the low, on whom assurance sits as a silk cap on a Bradford millionaire. The time is now propitious, as he guesses the meal is ended. She is bored and tired. Endevers to engage her in caresses, which still are unapproved, if undesired. Flushed and decided, he assaults at once. Exploring hands and counter no defense. His vanity requires no response and makes a welcome of indifference. And I, Tyreseus, have foresuffered all enacted on this same divan or bed. I, who have sat by thieves below the wall, and walked among the lowest of the dead, bestows one final patronizing 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 smooths 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. Oh, city, city! I can sometimes hear, beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street, the pleasant whining of a mandolin, and a clatter and a chatter from within where fishmen lounge at noon, where the walls of Bagnus Martyr hold inexplicable splendor of Ionian white and gold. The river sweats oil and tar, the barges drift with the turning tide. Red sails, wide to lured, swing on the heavy spar. The barges wash, drifting logs down Greenwich Reach, past the isle of dogs. Elizabeth and Lester, beating oars, the stern was formed, a gilded shell red and gold, the brisk swell, rippled both shores. Southwest wind carried downstream the peal of bells, white towers. Trams and dusty trees. Highbury bore me. Richmond and Q. undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees supine on the floor of a narrow canoe. Then my feet read more yet in my heart under my feet. After the event he wept, he promised a new start. I made no comment, what should I resent? On market sands I can connect nothing with nothing. The broken fingernails of dirty hands, my people, humble people, who expect nothing. To Carthage then I came, burning, burning, burning, burning. O Lord, that pluckest me out, O Lord, that pluckest, burning. Part 4 Death by Water Flea-bus 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 and whispers. As he rose and fell he passed the stages of his aged youth entering the whirlpool. Gentile, or Jew, O you who turn the wheel and look to windward, consider Flea-bus who was once handsome and tall, as you. Part 5 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. Part 6 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 mud-cracked houses. If there were water and no rock, if there were rock and also water, and water, 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's rush 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, wrapped, in a brown mantle, hooded. I do not know whether a man or 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 roof-tree. In a flash of lightning, then, a damp gust bringing rain. Gungo 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. 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. 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 ethereal rumors revive for a moment a broken choreography. The boat responded gaily to the hand expert with sail and ore. 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. Oh, swallow, swallow, the prince has left the tower at last. These fragments I have shored against my ruins. All right then, I'll fight you. Hieronymus mad again. Damjata. Shanti. Shanti. Shanti. End of poem. This recording is in the public domain.