Preludes- A poem by T.s. Eliot (one of my favourite poems)

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


A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.



And then the lighting of the lamps.


II


The morning comes to consciousness


Of faint stale smells of beer


From the sawdust-trampled street


With all its muddy feet that press


To early coffee-stands.






With the other masquerades


That time resumes,


One thinks of all the hands


That are raising dingy shades


In a thousand furnished rooms.




III


You tossed a blanket from the bed,


You lay upon your back, and waited;


You dozed, and watched the night revealing


The thousand sordid images


Of which your soul was constituted;


They flickered against the ceiling.


And when all the world came back


And the light crept up between the shutters,


And you heard the sparrows in the gutters,


You had such a vision of the street


As the street hardly understands;


Sitting along the bed's edge, where


You curled the papers from your hair,


Or clasped the yellow soles of feet


In the palms of both soiled hands.


IV


His soul stretched tight across the skies


That fade behind a city block,


Or trampled by insistent feet


At four and five and six o'clock;


And short square fingers stuffing pipes,


And evening newspapers, and eyes


Assured of certain certainties,


The conscience of a blackened street


Impatient to assume the world.




I am moved by fancies that are curled


Around these images, and cling:


The notion of some infinitely gentle


Infinitely suffering thing.




Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;


The worlds revolve like ancient women


Gathering fuel in vacant lots.

- T.S. Eliot