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'''The Waste Land''' ist ein Gedicht von [[Thomas Stearns Eliot|T.S. Eliot]]. Es inspirierte {{Stephen}}, als dieser die einzelnen Teile seines [[Dunkler Turm Zyklus|DT Zyklus]] schrieb. Dem Autor und dem Gedicht zu Ehren nannte King den dritten Teil der Saga ''[[tot|The Waste Lands]]'' (dt. ''tot.'')
<center>Anmerkung: Das folgende Gedicht wird mit freundlicher Genehmigung von [http://www.stephen-king.de www.stephen-king.de] hier abgebildet.</center>
'''Part 1 - Burial of the Dead'''
April is the cruellest month, breeding<br/>
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing<br/>
Memory and desire, stirring<br/>
Dull roots with spring rain.<br/>
Winter kept us warm, covering<br/>
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding<br/>
A little life with dried tubers.<br/>
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee<br/>
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,<br/>
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten<br/>
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.<br/>
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.<br/>
And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke's,<br/>
My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,<br/>
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,<br/>
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.<br/>
In the mountains, there you feel free.<br/>
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.<br/>
<br/>What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
<br/>Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
<br/>You canot say, or guess, for you know only
<br/>A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
<br/>And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
<br/>And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
<br/>There is shadow under this red rock,
<br/>(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
<br/>And I will show you something different from either
<br/>Your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
<br/>I will show you fear in a handfull of dust.
<br/>Frisch weht der Wind
<br/>Der Heimat zu
<br/>Mein Irisch Kind,
<br/>Wo weilest du?
<br/>'You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
<br/>They called me the hyacinth girl.'
<br/>--Yet when we came back, late, from the hyacinth garden,
<br/>Your arms full and your hair wet, I could not
<br/>Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
<br/>Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
<br/>Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
<br/>Oed'und leer das Meer.
<br/>Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
<br/>Had a bad cold, nevertheless
<br/>Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
<br/>With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
<br/>Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
<br/>(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
<br/>Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
<br/>The lady of situations.
<br/>Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
<br/>And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
<br/>Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
<br/>Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
<br/>The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
<br/>I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.
<br/>Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,
<br/>Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:
<br/>One must be so careful these days.
<br/>Unreal City,
<br/>Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
<br/>A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
<br/>I had not thought death had undone so many.
<br/>Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
<br/>And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
<br/>Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
<br/>To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
<br/>With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
<br/>There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying: 'Stetson!
<br/>'You who were with me in the ships at Mylae
<br/>'That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
<br/>'Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
<br/>'Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
<br/>'O keep the Dog far hence, that's friend to men,
<br/>'Or with his nails he'll dig it up again!
<br/>'You! hypocrite lecteur!--mon semblable,--mon frere!'
'''Part 2 - A Game of Chess'''
<br/>The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,
<br/>Glowed on the marble, where the glass<br/>
Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines<br/>
From which a golden Cupidon peeped out<br/>
(Another hid his eyes behind his wing)<br/>
Doubled the flames of seven-branched candleabra<br/>
Reflecting light upon the table as<br/>
The glitter of her jewels rose to meet it,<br/>
From satin cases poured in rich profusion.<br/>
In vials of ivory and coloured glass<br/>
Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfume<br/>
Unguent, powdered, or liquid--troubled, vondused<br/>
And drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the air<br/>
That freshened from the window, these ascended<br/>
In fattening the prolonged candle-flames,<br/>
Flung their smoke into the laquearia,<br/>
Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling.<br/>
Huge sea-wood fed with copper<br/>
Burned green and orange, framed by the colored stone<br/>
In which sad light a carved dolphin swam<br/>
Above the antique mantel was displayed<br/>
As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene<br/>
The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king<br/>
So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale<br/>
Filled all the desert with inviolable voice<br/>
And still she cried, and still the world pursues,<br/>
'Jug Jug' to dirty ears.<br/>
And other withered stumps of time<br/>
Were told upon the walls; staring forms<br/>
Leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed.<br/>
Footstpes shuffled on the stair.<br/>
Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair<br/>
Spread out in fiery points<br/>
Glowed into words, then would be savagely still.<br/>
'My nerves are bad t-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me.<br/>
'Speak to me. Why do you never speak? Speak.<br/>
'What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?<br/>
'I never know what you are thinking. Think.'<br/>
I think we are in rat's alley<br/>
Where the dead men lost their bones.<br/>
'What is that noise?'<br/>
The wind under the door.<br/>
'What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?'<br/>
Nothing again nothing.<br/>
'Do<br/>
'You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember<br/>
'Nothing?'<br/>
I remember<br/>
Those pearls that were his eyes.<br/>
'Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?'<br/>
But<br/>
O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag--<br/>
It's so elegant<br/>
So intelligent<br/>
'What shall I do now? What shall I do?'<br/>
'I shall rush out as I am, walk the street<br/>
'With my hair down, so. What shall we do to-morrow?<br/>
'What shall we ever do?<br/>
The hot water at ten.<br/>
And if it rains, a closed car at four.<br/>
And we shall play a game of chess,<br/>
Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.<br/>
When Lil's husband got demobbed, I said--<br/>
I didn't mince my words, I said to her myself,<br/>
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME<br/>
Now Albert's coming back, make yourself a bit smart.<br/>
He'll want to know what you done with that money he gave you<br/>
To get yourself some teeth. He did, I was there.<br/>
You have them all out, Lil, and get a nice set,<br/>
He said, I swear, I can't bear to look at you.<br/>
And no more can't I, I said, and think of poor Albert,<br/>
He's been in the army for four years, he wants a good time<br/>
And if you don't give it him, there's others will, I said.<br/>
Oh is there, she said. Something o' that, I said.<br/>
Then I'll know who to thank, she said, and give me a straight look.<br/>
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME<br/>
If you don't like it you can get on with it, I said.<br/>
Others can pick and choose if you can't.<br/>
But if Albert makes off, it won't be for lack of telling.<br/>
You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique.<br/>
(And her thirty-one.)<br/>
I can't help it, she said, pulling a long face,<br/>
It's them pills I took, to bring it off, she said.<br/>
(She had five already and nearly died of young George.)<br/>
The chemist said it would be all right, but I've never been the same.<br/>
You are a proper fool, I said.<br/>
Well, if Albert won't leave you alone, there it is, I said,<br/>
What you get married for if you don't want children?<br/>
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME<br/>
Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had a hot gammon<br/>
And they asked me in to dinner, to get the beauty of it--<br/>
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME<br/>
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME<br/>
Goodnight Bill. Goodnight Lou. Goodnight May. Goodnight.<br/>
Ta ta. Goodnight. Goodnight.<br/>
Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.<br/>
'''Part 3 - The Fire Sermon'''
The river's tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf<br/>
Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind<br/>
Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.<br/>
Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.<br/>
The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,<br/>
Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends<br/>
Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed.<br/>
And their friends, the loitering heirs of City directors;<br/>
Departed, have left no addresses.<br/>
By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept...<br/>
Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,<br/>
Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.<br/>
But at my back in a cold blast I hear<br/>
The ratttle of bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.<br/>
A rat crept softly through vegetation<br/>
Dragging its slimy belly on the bank<br/>
While I was fishing in the dull canal<br/>
On a winter evening round behind the gashouse<br/>
Musing upon the king my brother's wreck<br/>
And the king my father's death before him.<br/>
White bodies naked on the low damp ground<br/>
And bones cast in a little low dry garret,<br/>
Rattled by the rat's foot only, year to year.<br/>
But at my back from time to time I hear<br/>
The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring<br/>
Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring.<br/>
O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter<br/>
And on her daughter<br/>
They wash their feet in soda water<br/>
Et O ces voix d'enfants, chantant dans la coupole!<br/>
Twit twit twit<br/>
Jug jug jug jug jug jug<br/>
So rudely forc'd<br/>
Tereu<br/>
Unreal City<br/>
Under the brown fog of a winter noon<br/>
Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant<br/>
Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants<br/>
C.i.f. London: documents at sight,<br/>
Asked me in demotic French<br/>
To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel<br/>
Followed by a weekend at the Metropole.<br/>
At the violet hour, when the eyes and back<br/>
Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits<br/>
Like a taxi throbbing waiting,<br/>
I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,<br/>
Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see<br/>
At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives<br/>
Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,<br/>
The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights<br/>
Her stove, and lays out food; in tins.<br/>
Out of the window perilously spread<br/>
Her drying combinations touched by the sun's last rays,<br/>
On the divan are piled (at night her bed)<br/>
Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.<br/>
I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs<br/>
Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest--<br/>
I too awaited the expected guest.<br/>
He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,<br/>
A small house agent's clerk, with one bold stare,<br/>
One of the low on whom assurance sits<br/>
As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.<br/>
The time is now propitious, as he guesses,<br/>
The meal is ended, she is bored and tired,<br/>
Endeavours to engage her in caresses<br/>
Which are still unreproved, if undesired.<br/>
Flushed and decided, he assaults at one;<br/>
Exploring hands rencounter no defence;<br/>
His vanity requires no response,<br/>
And makes a welcome of indifference.<br/>
(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all<br/>
Enacted on this same divan or bed;<br/>
I who have sat by Thebes below the wall<br/>
And walked amongh the lowest of the dead.)<br/>
Bestows one final patronising kiss,<br/>
And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit...<br/>
She turns and looks a moment in the glass,<br/>
Hardly aware of her departed love;<br/>
Her brain allows one-half formed thought to pass:<br/>
'Well now that's done: and I'm glad it's over.'<br/>
When lovely woman stoops to folly and<br/>
Paces about her room again, alone,<br/>
She smooths her hair with automatic hand,<br/>
And puts a record on the gramaphone.<br/>
'This music crept by me upon the waters'<br/>
And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street.<br/>
O City city, I can sometimes hear<br/>
Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street,<br/>
The pleasant whining of a mandolin<br/>
And a clatter and a chatter from within<br/>
Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls<br/>
Of Magnus Martyr hold<br/>
Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.<br/>
The river sweats<br/>
Oil and tar<br/>
The barges drift<br/>
With the turning tide<br/>
Red sails<br/>
Wide<br/>
To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.<br/>
The barges wash<br/>
Drifting logs<br/>
Down Greenwich reach<br/>
Past the Isle of Dogs.<br/>
Weialala leia<br/>
Wallala leialala<br/>
Elizabeth and Leicester<br/>
Beating oars<br/>
The stern was formed<br/>
A gilded shell<br/>
Red and gold<br/>
The brisk swell<br/>
Rippled both shores<br/>
Southwest wind<br/>
Carried down stream<br/>
The peal of bells<br/>
White towers<br/>
Weialala leia<br/>
Wallala leialala<br/>
'Trams and dusty trees<br/>
Highbury bore me. Richmond and Kew<br/>
Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees<br/>
Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe.'<br/>
'My feet are Moorgate, and my heart<br/>
Under my feet. After the event<br/>
He wept. He promisd "a new start."<br/>
I made no comment. What should I resent?'<br/>
'On Margate Sands.<br/>
I can connect<br/>
Nothing with nothing.<br/>
The broken fingernails of dirty hands.<br/>
My people humble people who expect<br/>
Nothing.'<br/>
la la<br/>
To Carthage then I came<br/>
Burning burning burning burning<br/>
O Lord Thou pluckest me out<br/>
O Lord Thou pluckest<br/>
burning<br/>
'''Part 4 - Death by Water'''<br/>
Phelbas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,<br/>
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell<br/>
And the profit and loss.<br/>
A current under sea<br/>
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell<br/>
He passed the stages of his age and youth<br/>
Entering whirpool.<br/>
Gentile or Jew<br/>
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,<br/>
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.<br/>
'''Part 5 - What the Thunder Said'''
After the torchlight red on sweaty faces<br/>
After the frosty silence in the gardens<br/>
After the agony in stony places<br/>
The shouting and the crying<br/>
Prison and palace and reverberation<br/>
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains<br/>
He who was living is now dead<br/>
We who were living are now dying<br/>
With a little patience<br/>
Here is no water but only rock<br/>
Rock and no water and the sandy road<br/>
The road winding above among the mountains<br/>
Which are mountains of rock without water<br/>
If there were water we should stop and drink<br/>
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think<br/>
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand<br/>
If there were only water amongst the rock<br/>
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit<br/>
Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit<br/>
There is not even slience in the mountains<br/>
But dry sterile thunder without rain<br/>
There is not even solitude in the mountains<br/>
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl<br/>
From doors of mudcracked houses<br/>
If there were water<br/>
And no rock<br/>
If there were rock<br/>
And also water<br/>
And water<br/>
A spring<br/>
A pool among the rock<br/>
If there were the sound of water only<br/>
Not the cicada<br/>
And dry grass singing<br/>
But sound of water over a rock<br/>
Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees<br/>
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop<br/>
But there is no water<br/>
Who is the third who walks always beside you?<br/>
When I count, there are only you and I together<br/>
But when I look ahead up the white road<br/>
There is always another one walking beside you<br/>
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded<br/>
I do not know whether a man or a woman<br/>
--But who is that on the other side of you?<br/>
What is that sound high in the air<br/>
Murmur of maternal lamentation<br/>
Why are those hooded hordes swarming<br/>
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth<br/>
Ringed by the flat horizon only<br/>
What is the city over the mountains<br/>
Cracks and reforms and burst in the violet air<br/>
Falling towers<br/>
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria<br/>
Vienna London<br/>
Unreal<br/>
A woman drew her long black hair out tight<br/>
And fiddled whisper music on those strings<br/>
And bats with baby faces in the violet light<br/>
Whistled, and beat their wings<br/>
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall<br/>
And upsdie down in air were towers<br/>
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours<br/>
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells<br/>
In this decayed hole among the mountains<br/>
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing<br/>
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel<br/>
There is an empty chapel, on the wind's home.<br/>
It has no windows, and the door swings,<br/>
Dry bones can harm no one.<br/>
Only a cock stood on the rooftree<br/>
Co co rico co co rico<br/>
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust<br/>
Bringing rain<br/>
Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves<br/>
Waited for rain, while the black clouds<br/>
Gathered far distant, over Himavant.<br/>
The jungle crouched, humped in silence.<br/>
Then spoke the thunder<br/>
DA<br/>
Datta: what have we give?<br/>
My friend, blood shaking my heart<br/>
The awful daring of a moment's surrender<br/>
Which an age of prudence can never retract<br/>
By this, and this only, we have existed<br/>
Which is not to be found in our obituaries<br/>
Or in memories draped by the beneficient spider<br/>
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor<br/>
In our empty rooms<br/>
DA<br/>
Dayadhvam: I have heard the key<br/>
Turn in the door once and turn once only<br/>
We think of the key, each in his prison<br/>
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison<br/>
Only at nightfall, aethereal rumours<br/>
Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus<br/>
DA<br/>
Damyata: The boat responded<br/>
Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar<br/>
The sea was calm, your heart would have responded<br/>
Gaily, when invited, beating obedient<br/>
To controlling hands<br/>
I sat upon the shore<br/>
Fishing, with arid plain behind me<br/>
Shall I at least set my lands in order?<br/>
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down<br/>
Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina<br/>
Quando fiam uti chelidon--O swallow swallow<br/>
Le Prince d'Aquitaine a la tour abolie<br/>
These fragments I have shored against my ruins<br/>
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe.<br/>
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.<br/>
Shantih shantih shantih<br/>
[[Kategorie:Werk mit Einfluss auf King]]
<center>Anmerkung: Das folgende Gedicht wird mit freundlicher Genehmigung von [http://www.stephen-king.de www.stephen-king.de] hier abgebildet.</center>
'''Part 1 - Burial of the Dead'''
April is the cruellest month, breeding<br/>
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing<br/>
Memory and desire, stirring<br/>
Dull roots with spring rain.<br/>
Winter kept us warm, covering<br/>
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding<br/>
A little life with dried tubers.<br/>
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee<br/>
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,<br/>
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten<br/>
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.<br/>
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.<br/>
And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke's,<br/>
My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,<br/>
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,<br/>
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.<br/>
In the mountains, there you feel free.<br/>
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.<br/>
<br/>What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
<br/>Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
<br/>You canot say, or guess, for you know only
<br/>A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
<br/>And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
<br/>And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
<br/>There is shadow under this red rock,
<br/>(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
<br/>And I will show you something different from either
<br/>Your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
<br/>I will show you fear in a handfull of dust.
<br/>Frisch weht der Wind
<br/>Der Heimat zu
<br/>Mein Irisch Kind,
<br/>Wo weilest du?
<br/>'You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
<br/>They called me the hyacinth girl.'
<br/>--Yet when we came back, late, from the hyacinth garden,
<br/>Your arms full and your hair wet, I could not
<br/>Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
<br/>Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
<br/>Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
<br/>Oed'und leer das Meer.
<br/>Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
<br/>Had a bad cold, nevertheless
<br/>Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
<br/>With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
<br/>Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
<br/>(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
<br/>Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
<br/>The lady of situations.
<br/>Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
<br/>And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
<br/>Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
<br/>Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
<br/>The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
<br/>I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.
<br/>Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,
<br/>Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:
<br/>One must be so careful these days.
<br/>Unreal City,
<br/>Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
<br/>A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
<br/>I had not thought death had undone so many.
<br/>Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
<br/>And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
<br/>Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
<br/>To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
<br/>With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
<br/>There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying: 'Stetson!
<br/>'You who were with me in the ships at Mylae
<br/>'That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
<br/>'Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
<br/>'Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
<br/>'O keep the Dog far hence, that's friend to men,
<br/>'Or with his nails he'll dig it up again!
<br/>'You! hypocrite lecteur!--mon semblable,--mon frere!'
'''Part 2 - A Game of Chess'''
<br/>The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,
<br/>Glowed on the marble, where the glass<br/>
Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines<br/>
From which a golden Cupidon peeped out<br/>
(Another hid his eyes behind his wing)<br/>
Doubled the flames of seven-branched candleabra<br/>
Reflecting light upon the table as<br/>
The glitter of her jewels rose to meet it,<br/>
From satin cases poured in rich profusion.<br/>
In vials of ivory and coloured glass<br/>
Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfume<br/>
Unguent, powdered, or liquid--troubled, vondused<br/>
And drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the air<br/>
That freshened from the window, these ascended<br/>
In fattening the prolonged candle-flames,<br/>
Flung their smoke into the laquearia,<br/>
Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling.<br/>
Huge sea-wood fed with copper<br/>
Burned green and orange, framed by the colored stone<br/>
In which sad light a carved dolphin swam<br/>
Above the antique mantel was displayed<br/>
As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene<br/>
The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king<br/>
So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale<br/>
Filled all the desert with inviolable voice<br/>
And still she cried, and still the world pursues,<br/>
'Jug Jug' to dirty ears.<br/>
And other withered stumps of time<br/>
Were told upon the walls; staring forms<br/>
Leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed.<br/>
Footstpes shuffled on the stair.<br/>
Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair<br/>
Spread out in fiery points<br/>
Glowed into words, then would be savagely still.<br/>
'My nerves are bad t-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me.<br/>
'Speak to me. Why do you never speak? Speak.<br/>
'What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?<br/>
'I never know what you are thinking. Think.'<br/>
I think we are in rat's alley<br/>
Where the dead men lost their bones.<br/>
'What is that noise?'<br/>
The wind under the door.<br/>
'What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?'<br/>
Nothing again nothing.<br/>
'Do<br/>
'You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember<br/>
'Nothing?'<br/>
I remember<br/>
Those pearls that were his eyes.<br/>
'Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?'<br/>
But<br/>
O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag--<br/>
It's so elegant<br/>
So intelligent<br/>
'What shall I do now? What shall I do?'<br/>
'I shall rush out as I am, walk the street<br/>
'With my hair down, so. What shall we do to-morrow?<br/>
'What shall we ever do?<br/>
The hot water at ten.<br/>
And if it rains, a closed car at four.<br/>
And we shall play a game of chess,<br/>
Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.<br/>
When Lil's husband got demobbed, I said--<br/>
I didn't mince my words, I said to her myself,<br/>
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME<br/>
Now Albert's coming back, make yourself a bit smart.<br/>
He'll want to know what you done with that money he gave you<br/>
To get yourself some teeth. He did, I was there.<br/>
You have them all out, Lil, and get a nice set,<br/>
He said, I swear, I can't bear to look at you.<br/>
And no more can't I, I said, and think of poor Albert,<br/>
He's been in the army for four years, he wants a good time<br/>
And if you don't give it him, there's others will, I said.<br/>
Oh is there, she said. Something o' that, I said.<br/>
Then I'll know who to thank, she said, and give me a straight look.<br/>
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME<br/>
If you don't like it you can get on with it, I said.<br/>
Others can pick and choose if you can't.<br/>
But if Albert makes off, it won't be for lack of telling.<br/>
You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique.<br/>
(And her thirty-one.)<br/>
I can't help it, she said, pulling a long face,<br/>
It's them pills I took, to bring it off, she said.<br/>
(She had five already and nearly died of young George.)<br/>
The chemist said it would be all right, but I've never been the same.<br/>
You are a proper fool, I said.<br/>
Well, if Albert won't leave you alone, there it is, I said,<br/>
What you get married for if you don't want children?<br/>
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME<br/>
Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had a hot gammon<br/>
And they asked me in to dinner, to get the beauty of it--<br/>
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME<br/>
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME<br/>
Goodnight Bill. Goodnight Lou. Goodnight May. Goodnight.<br/>
Ta ta. Goodnight. Goodnight.<br/>
Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.<br/>
'''Part 3 - The Fire Sermon'''
The river's tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf<br/>
Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind<br/>
Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.<br/>
Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.<br/>
The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,<br/>
Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends<br/>
Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed.<br/>
And their friends, the loitering heirs of City directors;<br/>
Departed, have left no addresses.<br/>
By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept...<br/>
Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,<br/>
Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.<br/>
But at my back in a cold blast I hear<br/>
The ratttle of bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.<br/>
A rat crept softly through vegetation<br/>
Dragging its slimy belly on the bank<br/>
While I was fishing in the dull canal<br/>
On a winter evening round behind the gashouse<br/>
Musing upon the king my brother's wreck<br/>
And the king my father's death before him.<br/>
White bodies naked on the low damp ground<br/>
And bones cast in a little low dry garret,<br/>
Rattled by the rat's foot only, year to year.<br/>
But at my back from time to time I hear<br/>
The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring<br/>
Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring.<br/>
O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter<br/>
And on her daughter<br/>
They wash their feet in soda water<br/>
Et O ces voix d'enfants, chantant dans la coupole!<br/>
Twit twit twit<br/>
Jug jug jug jug jug jug<br/>
So rudely forc'd<br/>
Tereu<br/>
Unreal City<br/>
Under the brown fog of a winter noon<br/>
Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant<br/>
Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants<br/>
C.i.f. London: documents at sight,<br/>
Asked me in demotic French<br/>
To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel<br/>
Followed by a weekend at the Metropole.<br/>
At the violet hour, when the eyes and back<br/>
Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits<br/>
Like a taxi throbbing waiting,<br/>
I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,<br/>
Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see<br/>
At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives<br/>
Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,<br/>
The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights<br/>
Her stove, and lays out food; in tins.<br/>
Out of the window perilously spread<br/>
Her drying combinations touched by the sun's last rays,<br/>
On the divan are piled (at night her bed)<br/>
Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.<br/>
I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs<br/>
Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest--<br/>
I too awaited the expected guest.<br/>
He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,<br/>
A small house agent's clerk, with one bold stare,<br/>
One of the low on whom assurance sits<br/>
As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.<br/>
The time is now propitious, as he guesses,<br/>
The meal is ended, she is bored and tired,<br/>
Endeavours to engage her in caresses<br/>
Which are still unreproved, if undesired.<br/>
Flushed and decided, he assaults at one;<br/>
Exploring hands rencounter no defence;<br/>
His vanity requires no response,<br/>
And makes a welcome of indifference.<br/>
(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all<br/>
Enacted on this same divan or bed;<br/>
I who have sat by Thebes below the wall<br/>
And walked amongh the lowest of the dead.)<br/>
Bestows one final patronising kiss,<br/>
And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit...<br/>
She turns and looks a moment in the glass,<br/>
Hardly aware of her departed love;<br/>
Her brain allows one-half formed thought to pass:<br/>
'Well now that's done: and I'm glad it's over.'<br/>
When lovely woman stoops to folly and<br/>
Paces about her room again, alone,<br/>
She smooths her hair with automatic hand,<br/>
And puts a record on the gramaphone.<br/>
'This music crept by me upon the waters'<br/>
And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street.<br/>
O City city, I can sometimes hear<br/>
Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street,<br/>
The pleasant whining of a mandolin<br/>
And a clatter and a chatter from within<br/>
Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls<br/>
Of Magnus Martyr hold<br/>
Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.<br/>
The river sweats<br/>
Oil and tar<br/>
The barges drift<br/>
With the turning tide<br/>
Red sails<br/>
Wide<br/>
To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.<br/>
The barges wash<br/>
Drifting logs<br/>
Down Greenwich reach<br/>
Past the Isle of Dogs.<br/>
Weialala leia<br/>
Wallala leialala<br/>
Elizabeth and Leicester<br/>
Beating oars<br/>
The stern was formed<br/>
A gilded shell<br/>
Red and gold<br/>
The brisk swell<br/>
Rippled both shores<br/>
Southwest wind<br/>
Carried down stream<br/>
The peal of bells<br/>
White towers<br/>
Weialala leia<br/>
Wallala leialala<br/>
'Trams and dusty trees<br/>
Highbury bore me. Richmond and Kew<br/>
Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees<br/>
Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe.'<br/>
'My feet are Moorgate, and my heart<br/>
Under my feet. After the event<br/>
He wept. He promisd "a new start."<br/>
I made no comment. What should I resent?'<br/>
'On Margate Sands.<br/>
I can connect<br/>
Nothing with nothing.<br/>
The broken fingernails of dirty hands.<br/>
My people humble people who expect<br/>
Nothing.'<br/>
la la<br/>
To Carthage then I came<br/>
Burning burning burning burning<br/>
O Lord Thou pluckest me out<br/>
O Lord Thou pluckest<br/>
burning<br/>
'''Part 4 - Death by Water'''<br/>
Phelbas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,<br/>
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell<br/>
And the profit and loss.<br/>
A current under sea<br/>
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell<br/>
He passed the stages of his age and youth<br/>
Entering whirpool.<br/>
Gentile or Jew<br/>
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,<br/>
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.<br/>
'''Part 5 - What the Thunder Said'''
After the torchlight red on sweaty faces<br/>
After the frosty silence in the gardens<br/>
After the agony in stony places<br/>
The shouting and the crying<br/>
Prison and palace and reverberation<br/>
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains<br/>
He who was living is now dead<br/>
We who were living are now dying<br/>
With a little patience<br/>
Here is no water but only rock<br/>
Rock and no water and the sandy road<br/>
The road winding above among the mountains<br/>
Which are mountains of rock without water<br/>
If there were water we should stop and drink<br/>
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think<br/>
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand<br/>
If there were only water amongst the rock<br/>
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit<br/>
Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit<br/>
There is not even slience in the mountains<br/>
But dry sterile thunder without rain<br/>
There is not even solitude in the mountains<br/>
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl<br/>
From doors of mudcracked houses<br/>
If there were water<br/>
And no rock<br/>
If there were rock<br/>
And also water<br/>
And water<br/>
A spring<br/>
A pool among the rock<br/>
If there were the sound of water only<br/>
Not the cicada<br/>
And dry grass singing<br/>
But sound of water over a rock<br/>
Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees<br/>
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop<br/>
But there is no water<br/>
Who is the third who walks always beside you?<br/>
When I count, there are only you and I together<br/>
But when I look ahead up the white road<br/>
There is always another one walking beside you<br/>
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded<br/>
I do not know whether a man or a woman<br/>
--But who is that on the other side of you?<br/>
What is that sound high in the air<br/>
Murmur of maternal lamentation<br/>
Why are those hooded hordes swarming<br/>
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth<br/>
Ringed by the flat horizon only<br/>
What is the city over the mountains<br/>
Cracks and reforms and burst in the violet air<br/>
Falling towers<br/>
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria<br/>
Vienna London<br/>
Unreal<br/>
A woman drew her long black hair out tight<br/>
And fiddled whisper music on those strings<br/>
And bats with baby faces in the violet light<br/>
Whistled, and beat their wings<br/>
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall<br/>
And upsdie down in air were towers<br/>
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours<br/>
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells<br/>
In this decayed hole among the mountains<br/>
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing<br/>
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel<br/>
There is an empty chapel, on the wind's home.<br/>
It has no windows, and the door swings,<br/>
Dry bones can harm no one.<br/>
Only a cock stood on the rooftree<br/>
Co co rico co co rico<br/>
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust<br/>
Bringing rain<br/>
Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves<br/>
Waited for rain, while the black clouds<br/>
Gathered far distant, over Himavant.<br/>
The jungle crouched, humped in silence.<br/>
Then spoke the thunder<br/>
DA<br/>
Datta: what have we give?<br/>
My friend, blood shaking my heart<br/>
The awful daring of a moment's surrender<br/>
Which an age of prudence can never retract<br/>
By this, and this only, we have existed<br/>
Which is not to be found in our obituaries<br/>
Or in memories draped by the beneficient spider<br/>
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor<br/>
In our empty rooms<br/>
DA<br/>
Dayadhvam: I have heard the key<br/>
Turn in the door once and turn once only<br/>
We think of the key, each in his prison<br/>
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison<br/>
Only at nightfall, aethereal rumours<br/>
Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus<br/>
DA<br/>
Damyata: The boat responded<br/>
Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar<br/>
The sea was calm, your heart would have responded<br/>
Gaily, when invited, beating obedient<br/>
To controlling hands<br/>
I sat upon the shore<br/>
Fishing, with arid plain behind me<br/>
Shall I at least set my lands in order?<br/>
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down<br/>
Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina<br/>
Quando fiam uti chelidon--O swallow swallow<br/>
Le Prince d'Aquitaine a la tour abolie<br/>
These fragments I have shored against my ruins<br/>
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe.<br/>
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.<br/>
Shantih shantih shantih<br/>
[[Kategorie:Werk mit Einfluss auf King]]
