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 […]
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 […]
Dans le Restaurant by T. S. Eliot
LE garçon délabré qui n’a rien à faire Que de se gratter les doigts et se pencher sur mon épaule: “Dans mon pays il fera temps pluvieux, Du vent, du grand soleil, et de la pluie; C’est ce qu’on appelle le jour de lessive des gueux.” (Bavard, baveux, à la croupe arrondie, Je te prie, […]
Cousin Nancy by T. S. Eliot
MISS NANCY ELLICOTT Strode across the hills and broke them, Rode across the hills and broke them— The barren New England hills— Riding to hounds Over the cow-pasture. Miss Nancy Ellicott smoked And danced all the modern dances; And her aunts were not quite sure how they felt about it, But they knew that it […]
Conversation Galante by T. S. Eliot
I OBSERVE: “Our sentimental friend the moon! Or possibly (fantastic, I confess) It may be Prester John’s balloon Or an old battered lantern hung aloft To light poor travellers to their distress.” She then: “How you digress!” And I then: “Someone frames upon the keys That exquisite nocturne, with which we explain The night and […]
Aunt Helen by T. S. Eliot
MISS HELEN SLINGSBY was my maiden aunt, And lived in a small house near a fashionable square Cared for by servants to the number of four. Now when she died there was silence in heaven And silence at her end of the street. The shutters were drawn and the undertaker wiped his feet— He was […]
A Cooking Egg by T. S. Eliot
En l’an trentiesme do mon aage Que toutes mes hontes j’ay beues… PIPIT sate upright in her chair Some distance from where I was sitting; Views of the Oxford Colleges Lay on the table, with the knitting. Daguerreotypes and silhouettes, Here grandfather and great great aunts, Supported on the mantelpiece An Invitation to the Dance. […]
Continual Conversation With A Silent Man by Wallace Stevens
The old brown hen and the old blue sky, Between the two we live and die– The broken cartwheel on the hill. As if, in the presence of the sea, We dried our nets and mended sail And talked of never-ending things, Of the never-ending storm of will, One will and many wills, and the […]
Bantams In Pine-Woods by Wallace Stevens
Chieftain Iffucan of Azcan in caftan Of tan with henna hackles, halt! Damned universal cock, as if the sun Was blackamoor to bear your blazing tail. Fat! Fat! Fat! Fat! I am the personal. Your world is you. I am my world. You ten-foot poet among inchlings. Fat! Begone! An inchling bristles in these pines, […]
Gray Room by Wallace Stevens
Although you sit in a room that is gray, Except for the silver Of the straw-paper, And pick At your pale white gown; Or lift one of the green beads Of your necklace, To let it fall; Or gaze at your green fan Printed with the red branches of a red willow; Or, with one […]
A Postcard From The Volcano by Wallace Stevens
Children picking up our bones Will never know that these were once As quick as foxes on the hill; And that in autumn, when the grapes Made sharp air sharper by their smell These had a being, breathing frost; And least will guess that with our bones We left much more, left what still is […]
A High-Toned Old Christian Woman by Wallace Stevens
Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame. Take the moral law and make a nave of it And from the nave build haunted heaven. Thus, The conscience is converted into palms, Like windy citherns hankering for hymns. We agree in principle. That’s clear. But take The opposing law and make a peristyle, And from the peristyle […]
A Rabbit As King Of The Ghosts by Wallace Stevens
The difficulty to think at the end of day, When the shapeless shadow covers the sun And nothing is left except light on your fur— There was the cat slopping its milk all day, Fat cat, red tongue, green mind, white milk And August the most peaceful month. To be, in the grass, in the […]
Final Soliloquy Of The Interior Paramour by Wallace Stevens
Light the first light of evening, as in a room In which we rest and, for small reason, think The world imagined is the ultimate good. This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous. It is in that thought that we collect ourselves, Out of all the indifferences, into one thing: Within a single thing, a single […]
Domination Of Black by Wallace Stevens
At night, by the fire, The colors of the bushes And of the fallen leaves, Repeating themselves, Turned in the room, Like the leaves themselves Turning in the wind. Yes: but the color of the heavy hemlocks Came striding. And I remembered the cry of the peacocks. The colors of their tails Were like the […]
Disillusionment Of Ten O’clock by Wallace Stevens
The houses are haunted By white night-gowns. None are green, Or purple with green rings, Or green with yellow rings, Or yellow with blue rings. None of them are strange, With socks of lace And beaded ceintures. People are not going To dream of baboons and periwinkles. Only, here and there, an old sailor, Drunk […]
Not Ideas About The Thing But The Thing Itself by Wallace Stevens
At the earliest ending of winter, In March, a scrawny cry from outside Seemed like a sound in his mind. He knew that he heard it, A bird’s cry, at daylight or before, In the early March wind. The sun was rising at six, No longer a battered panache above snow… It would have been […]
Metaphors Of A Magnifico by Wallace Stevens
Twenty men crossing a bridge, Into a village, Are twenty men crossing twenty bridges, Into twenty villages, Or one man Crossing a single bridge into a village. This is old song That will not declare itself . . . Twenty men crossing a bridge, Into a village, Are Twenty men crossing a bridge Into a […]
Looking Across The Fields And Watching The Birds Fly by Wallace Stevens
Among the more irritating minor ideas Of Mr. Homburg during his visits home To Concord, at the edge of things, was this: To think away the grass, the trees, the clouds, Not to transform them into other things, Is only what the sun does every day, Until we say to ourselves that there may be […]
Life Is Motion by Wallace Stevens
In Oklahoma, Bonnie and Josie, Dressed in calico, Danced around a stump. They cried, “Ohoyaho, Ohoo” … Celebrating the marriage Of flesh and air. ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems by topic and subject. Poetry Monster — the ultimate repository of world poetry. Poetry Monster — the […]
Infanta Marina by Wallace Stevens
Her terrace was the sand And the palms and the twilight. She made of the motions of her wrist The grandiose gestures Of her thought. The rumpling of the plumes Of this creature of the evening Came to be sleights of sails Over the sea. And thus she roamed In the roamings of her fan, […]
Gubbinal by Wallace Stevens
That strange flower, the sun, Is just what you say. Have it your way. The world is ugly, And the people are sad. That tuft of jungle feathers, That animal eye, Is just what you say. That savage of fire, That seed, Have it your way. The world is ugly, And the people are sad. […]
Fabliau Of Florida by Wallace Stevens
Barque of phosphor On the palmy beach, Move outward into heaven, Into the alabasters And night blues. Foam and cloud are one. Sultry moon-monsters Are dissolving. Fill your black hull With white moonlight. There will never be an end To this droning of the surf. ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem […]
Earthy Anecdote by Wallace Stevens
Every time the bucks went clattering Over Oklahoma A firecat bristled in the way. Wherever they went, They went clattering, Until they swerved In a swift, circular line To the right, Because of the firecat. Or until they swerved In a swift, circular line To the left, Because of the firecat. The bucks clattered. The […]
Depression Before Spring by Wallace Stevens
The cock crows But no queen rises. The hair of my blonde Is dazzling, As the spittle of cows threading the wind. Ho! Ho! But ki-ki-ri-ki Brings no rou-cou, No rou-cou-cou. But no queen comes In slipper green. ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems by topic and […]
A Clear Day And No Memories by Wallace Stevens
No soldiers in the scenery, No thoughts of people now dead, As they were fifty years ago, Young and living in a live air, Young and walking in the sunshine, Bending in blue dresses to touch something, Today the mind is not part of the weather. Today the air is clear of everything. It has […]
Another Weeping Woman by Wallace Stevens
Pour the unhappiness out From your too bitter heart, Which grieving will not sweeten. Poison grows in this dark. It is in the water of tears Its black blooms rise. The magnificent cause of being, The imagination, the one reality In this imagined world Leaves you With him for whom no phantasy moves, And you […]
Anecdote Of Canna by Wallace Stevens
Huge are the canna in the dreams of X, the mighty thought, the mighty man. They fill the terrace of his capitol. His thought sleeps not. Yet thought that wakes In sleep may never meet another thought Or thing… Now day-break comes… X promenades the dewy stones, Observes the canna with a clinging eye, Observes […]
The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot
The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot On the meaning and significance of the poem Translations The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot FOR EZRA POUND IL MIGLIOR FABBRO I. The Burial of the Dead April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull […]