Brasilia by Sylvia Plath
Will they occur, These people with torso of steel Winged elbows and eyeholes Awaiting masses Of cloud to give them expression, These super-people! – And my baby a nail Driven, driven in. He shrieks in his grease Bones nosing for distance. And I, nearly extinct, His three teeth cutting Themselves on my thumb – And […]
Blue Moles by Sylvia Plath
1 They’re out of the dark’s ragbag, these two Moles dead in the pebbled rut, Shapeless as flung gloves, a few feet apart — Blue suede a dog or fox has chewed. One, by himself, seemed pitiable enough, Little victim unearthed by some large creature From his orbit under the elm root. The second carcass […]
Berck-Plage by Sylvia Plath
(1) This is the sea, then, this great abeyance. How the sun’s poultice draws on my inflammation. Electrifyingly-colored sherbets, scooped from the freeze By pale girls, travel the air in scorched hands. Why is it so quiet, what are they hiding? I have two legs, and I move smilingly.. A sandy damper kills the vibrations; […]
Barren Woman by Sylvia Plath
Empty, I echo to the least footfall, Museum without statues, grand with pillars, porticoes, rotundas. In my courtyard a fountain leaps and sinks back into itself, Nun-hearted and blind to the world. Marble lilies Exhale their pallor like scent. I imagine myself with a great public, Mother of a white Nike and several bald-eyed Apollos. […]
Aquatic Nocturne by Sylvia Plath
deep in liquid turquoise slivers of dilute light quiver in thin streaks of bright tinfoil on mobile jet: pale flounder waver by tilting silver: in the shallows agile minnows flicker gilt: grapeblue mussels dilate lithe and pliant valves: dull lunar globes of blubous jellyfish glow milkgreen: eels twirl in wily spirals on elusive tails: adroir […]
April Aubade by Sylvia Plath
Worship this world of watercolor mood in glass pagodas hung with veils of green where diamonds jangle hymns within the blood and sap ascends the steeple of the vein. A saintly sparrow jargons madrigals to waken dreamers in the milky dawn, while tulips bow like a college of cardinals before that papal paragon, the sun. […]
April 18 by Sylvia Plath
the slime of all my yesterdays rots in the hollow of my skull and if my stomach would contract because of some explicable phenomenon such as pregnancy or constipation I would not remember you or that because of sleep infrequent as a moon of greencheese that because of food nourishing as violet leaves that because […]
Among The Narcissi by Sylvia Plath
Spry, wry, and gray as these March sticks, Percy bows, in his blue peajacket, among the narcissi. He is recuperating from something on the lung. The narcissi, too, are bowing to some big thing : It rattles their stars on the green hill where Percy Nurses the hardship of his stitches, and walks and walks. […]
Alicante Lullaby by Sylvia Plath
In Alicante they bowl the barrels Bumblingly over the nubs of the cobbles Past the yellow-paella eateries, Below the ramshackle back-alley balconies, While the cocks and hens In the roofgardens Scuttle repose with crowns and cackles. Kumquat-colored trolleys ding as they trundle Passengers under an indigo fizzle Needling spumily down from the wires: Alongside the […]
Aerialist by Sylvia Plath
Aerialist Each night, this adroit young lady Lies among sheets Shredded fine as snowflakes Until dream takes her body From bed to strict tryouts In tightrope acrobatics. Nightly she balances Cat-clever on perilous wire In a gigantic hall, Footing her delicate dances To whipcrack and roar Which speak her maestro’s will. Gilded, coming correct Across […]
Whispers of Immortality by T. S. Eliot
WEBSTER was much possessed by death And saw the skull beneath the skin; And breastless creatures under ground Leaned backward with a lipless grin. Daffodil bulbs instead of balls Stared from the sockets of the eyes! He knew that thought clings round dead limbs Tightening its lusts and luxuries. Donne, I suppose, was such another […]
The Song Of The Jellicles by T. S. Eliot
Jellicle Cats come out tonight, Jellicle Cats come one come all: The Jellicle Moon is shining bright– Jellicles come to the Jellicle Ball. Jellicle Cats are black and white, Jellicle Cats are rather small; Jellicle Cats are merry and bright, And pleasant to hear when they caterwaul. Jellicle Cats have cheerful faces, Jellicle Cats have […]
The Rum Tum Tugger by T. S. Eliot
The Rum Tum Tugger is a Curious Cat: If you offer him pheasant he would rather have grouse. If you put him in a house he would much prefer a flat, If you put him in a flat then he’d rather have a house. If you set him on a mouse then he only wants […]
The Old Gumbie Cat by T. S. Eliot
I have a Gumbie Cat in mind, her name is Jennyanydots; Her coat is of the tabby kind, with tiger stripes and leopard spots. All day she sits upon the stair or on the steps or on the mat; She sits and sits and sits and sits–and that’s what makes a Gumbie Cat! But when […]
The Naming Of Cats by T. S. Eliot
The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter, It isn’t just one of your holiday games; You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES. First of all, there’s the name that the family use daily, Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo or […]
The Hollow Men by T. S. Eliot
Mistah Kurtz — he dead. A penny for the Old Guy I We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless As wind in dry grass Or rats’ feet over broken glass In our dry cellar […]
The Boston Evening Transcript by T. S. Eliot
THE READERS of the Boston Evening Transcript Sway in the wind like a field of ripe corn. When evening quickens faintly in the street, Wakening the appetites of life in some And to others bringing the Boston Evening Transcript, I mount the steps and ring the bell, turning Wearily, as one would turn to nod […]
The Ad-Dressing Of Cats by T. S. Eliot
You’ve read of several kinds of Cat, And my opinion now is that You should need no interpreter To understand their character. You now have learned enough to see That Cats are much like you and me And other people whom we find Possessed of various types of mind. For some are same and some […]
Sweeney Erect by T. S. Eliot
And the trees about me, Let them be dry and leafless; let the rocks Groan with continual surges; and behind me Make all a desolation. Look, look, wenches! PAINT me a cavernous waste shore Cast in the unstilled Cyclades, Paint me the bold anfractuous rocks Faced by the snarled and yelping seas. Display me Aeolus […]
Sweeney among the Nightingales by T. S. Eliot
APENECK SWEENEY spreads his knees Letting his arms hang down to laugh, The zebra stripes along his jaw Swelling to maculate giraffe. The circles of the stormy moon Slide westward toward the River Plate, Death and the Raven drift above And Sweeney guards the hornèd gate. Gloomy Orion and the Dog Are veiled; and hushed […]
Rhapsody on a Windy Night by T. S. Eliot
TWELVE o’clock. Along the reaches of the street Held in a lunar synthesis, Whispering lunar incantations Dissolve the floors of memory And all its clear relations Its divisions and precisions, Every street lamp that I pass Beats like a fatalistic drum, And through the spaces of the dark Midnight shakes the memory As a madman […]
Preludes by T. S. Eliot
I THE WINTER evening settles down With smell of steaks in passageways. Six o’clock. The burnt-out ends of smoky days. And now a gusty shower wraps The grimy scraps Of withered leaves about your feet And newspapers from vacant lots; The showers beat On broken blinds and chimney-pots, And at the corner of the street […]
Portrait of a Lady by T. S. Eliot
Thou hast committed— Fornication: but that was in another country, And besides, the wench is dead. The Jew of Malta. I AMONG the smoke and fog of a December afternoon You have the scene arrange itself—as it will seem to do— With “I have saved this afternoon for you”; And four wax candles in the […]
Old Deuteronomy by T. S. Eliot
Old Deuteronomy’s lived a long time; He’s a Cat who has lived many lives in succession. He was famous in proverb and famous in rhyme A long while before Queen Victoria’s accession. Old Deuteronomy’s buried nine wives And more–I am tempted to say, ninety-nine; And his numerous progeny prospers and thrives And the village is […]
Mungojerrie And Rumpelteazer by T. S. Eliot
Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer were a very notorious couple of cats. As knockabout clown, quick-change comedians, tight-rope walkers and acrobats They had extensive reputation. They made their home in Victoria Grove– That was merely their centre of operation, for they were incurably given to rove. They were very well know in Cornwall Gardens, in Launceston Place […]
Mr. Mistoffelees by T. S. Eliot
You ought to know Mr. Mistoffelees! The Original Conjuring Cat– (There can be no doubt about that). Please listen to me and don’t scoff. All his Inventions are off his own bat. There’s no such Cat in the metropolis; He holds all the patent monopolies For performing suprising illusions And creating eccentric confusions. At prestidigitation […]
Mr. Eliot’s Sunday Morning Service by T. S. Eliot
Look, look, master, here comes two religious caterpillars. The Jew of Malta. POLYPHILOPROGENITIVE The sapient sutlers of the Lord Drift across the window-panes. In the beginning was the Word. In the beginning was the Word. Superfetation of , And at the mensual turn of time Produced enervate Origen. A painter of the Umbrian school Designed […]
Mr. Apollinax by T. S. Eliot
WHEN Mr. Apollinax visited the United States His laughter tinkled among the teacups. I thought of Fragilion, that shy figure among the birch-trees, And of Priapus in the shrubbery Gaping at the lady in the swing. In the palace of Mrs. Phlaccus, at Professor Channing-Cheetah’s He laughed like an irresponsible foetus. His laughter was submarine […]
Morning at the Window by T. S. Eliot
THEY are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens, And along the trampled edges of the street I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids Sprouting despondently at area gates. The brown waves of fog toss up to me Twisted faces from the bottom of the street, And tear from a passer-by with muddy skirts […]
Mr. Apollinax by T. S. Eliot
WHEN Mr. Apollinax visited the United States His laughter tinkled among the teacups. I thought of Fragilion, that shy figure among the birch-trees, And of Priapus in the shrubbery Gaping at the lady in the swing. In the palace of Mrs. Phlaccus, at Professor Channing-Cheetah’s He laughed like an irresponsible foetus. His laughter was submarine […]
Morning at the Window by T. S. Eliot
THEY are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens, And along the trampled edges of the street I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids Sprouting despondently at area gates. The brown waves of fog toss up to me Twisted faces from the bottom of the street, And tear from a passer-by with muddy skirts […]
Lune de Miel by T. S. Eliot
ILS ont vu les Pays-Bas, ils rentrent à Terre Haute; Mais une nuit d’été, les voici à Ravenne, A l’aise entre deux draps, chez deux centaines de punaises; La sueur aestivale, et une forte odeur de chienne. Ils restent sur le dos écartant les genoux De quatre jambes molles tout gonflées de morsures. On relève […]
Le Directeur by T. S. Eliot
MALHEUR à la malheureuse Tamise Qui coule si preès du Spectateur. Le directeur Conservateur Du Spectateur Empeste la brise. Les actionnaires Réactionnaires Du Spectateur Conservateur Bras dessus bras dessous Font des tours A pas de loup. Dans un égout Une petite fille En guenilles Camarde Regarde Le directeur Du Spectateur Conservateur Et crève d’amour. ————— […]
La Figlia che Piange by T. S. Eliot
O quam te memorem virgo… STAND on the highest pavement of the stair— Lean on a garden urn— Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair— Clasp your flowers to you with a pained surprise— Fling them to the ground and turn With a fugitive resentment in your eyes: But weave, weave the sunlight in your […]
Journey Of The Magi by T. S. Eliot
‘A cold coming we had of it, Just the worst time of the year For a journey, and such a journey: The ways deep and the weather sharp, The very dead of winter.’ And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory, Lying down in the melting snow. There were times we regretted The summer palaces on slopes, […]
Hysteria by T. S. Eliot
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 […]
Gus: The Theatre Cat by T. S. Eliot
Gus is the Cat at the Theatre Door. His name, as I ought to have told you before, Is really Asparagus. That’s such a fuss To pronounce, that we usually call him just Gus. His coat’s very shabby, he’s thin as a rake, And he suffers from palsy that makes his paw shake. Yet he […]
Growltiger’s Last Stand by T. S. Eliot
GROWLTIGER was a Bravo Cat, who lived upon a barge; In fact he was the roughest cat that ever roamed at large. From Gravesend up to Oxford he pursued his evil aims, Rejoicing in his title of “The Terror of the Thames.” His manners and appearance did not calculate to please; His coat was torn […]
Gerontion by T. S. Eliot
Thou hast nor youth nor age But as it were an after dinner sleep Dreaming of both. HERE I am, an old man in a dry month, Being read to by a boy, waiting for rain. I was neither at the hot gates Nor fought in the warm rain Nor knee deep in the salt […]
Four Quartets 4: Little Gidding by T. S. Eliot
I Midwinter spring is its own season Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown, Suspended in time, between pole and tropic. When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire, The brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditches, In windless cold that is the heart’s heat, Reflecting in a watery mirror A glare that […]