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CHAPTER 1
I. The Burial of the Dead
April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain.
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Unreal City,
II. A Game of Chess
The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Above the antique mantel was displayed As though a window gave upon the sylvan 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,
"My nerves are bad tonight. Yes, bad. Stay with me.
I think we are in rats' alley Where the dead men lost their bones.
"What is that noise?"
I remember Those are pearls that were his eyes.
But O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag —
The hot water at ten.
When Lil's husband got demobbed, I said —
Now Albert's coming back, make yourself a bit smart.
III. 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.
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 gashouse 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,
Twit twit twit Jug jug jug jug jug jug So rudely forc'd.
Unreal City Under the brown fog of a winter noon Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants C.i.f. London: documents at sight,
At the violet hour, when the eyes and back Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits Like a taxi throbbing waiting,
Exploring hands encounter no defence;
She turns and looks a moment in the glass,
"This music crept by me upon the waters"
The river sweats
Elizabeth and Leicester
"Trams and dusty trees.
"My feet are at Moorgate, and my heart Under my feet. After the event He wept. He promised 'a new start.'
"On Margate Sands.
la la
To Carthage then I came Burning burning burning burning O Lord Thou pluckest me out O Lord Thou pluckest
burning
IV. Death By Water
Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
V. 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 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 mudcracked houses
Who is the third who walks always beside 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.
Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves Waited for rain, while the black clouds Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
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, aetherial rumours Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus DA
I sat upon the shore Fishing, with the arid plain behind me Shall I at least set my lands in order?
Shantih shantih shantih
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Waste Land"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Open Road Integrated Media, Inc..
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