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Best Famous Canal Poems

Here is a collection of the all-time best famous Canal poems. This is a select list of the best famous Canal poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Canal poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of canal poems.

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Written by Ogden Nash | Create an image from this poem

A Tale Of The Thirteenth Floor

 The hands of the clock were reaching high
In an old midtown hotel;
I name no name, but its sordid fame
Is table talk in hell.
I name no name, but hell's own flame Illumes the lobby garish, A gilded snare just off Times Square For the maidens of the parish.
The revolving door swept the grimy floor Like a crinoline grotesque, And a lowly bum from an ancient slum Crept furtively past the desk.
His footsteps sift into the lift As a knife in the sheath is slipped, Stealthy and swift into the lift As a vampire into a crypt.
Old Maxie, the elevator boy, Was reading an ode by Shelley, But he dropped the ode as it were a toad When the gun jammed into his belly.
There came a whisper as soft as mud In the bed of an old canal: "Take me up to the suite of Pinball Pete, The rat who betrayed my gal.
" The lift doth rise with groans and sighs Like a duchess for the waltz, Then in middle shaft, like a duchess daft, It changes its mind and halts.
The bum bites lip as the landlocked ship Doth neither fall nor rise, But Maxie the elevator boy Regards him with burning eyes.
"First, to explore the thirteenth floor," Says Maxie, "would be wise.
" Quoth the bum, "There is moss on your double cross, I have been this way before, I have cased the joint at every point, And there is no thirteenth floor.
The architect he skipped direct From twelve unto fourteen, There is twelve below and fourteen above, And nothing in between, For the vermin who dwell in this hotel Could never abide thirteen.
" Said Max, "Thirteen, that floor obscene, Is hidden from human sight; But once a year it doth appear, On this Walpurgis Night.
Ere you peril your soul in murderer's role, Heed those who sinned of yore; The path they trod led away from God, And onto the thirteenth floor, Where those they slew, a grisly crew, Reproach them forevermore.
"We are higher than twelve and below fourteen," Said Maxie to the bum, "And the sickening draft that taints the shaft Is a whiff of kingdom come.
The sickening draft that taints the shaft Blows through the devil's door!" And he squashed the latch like a fungus patch, And revealed the thirteenth floor.
It was cheap cigars like lurid scars That glowed in the rancid gloom, The murk was a-boil with fusel oil And the reek of stale perfume.
And round and round there dragged and wound A loathsome conga chain, The square and the hep in slow lock step, The slayer and the slain.
(For the souls of the victims ascend on high, But their bodies below remain.
) The clean souls fly to their home in the sky, But their bodies remain below To pursue the Cain who each has slain And harry him to and fro.
When life is extinct each corpse is linked To its gibbering murderer, As a chicken is bound with wire around The neck of a killer cur.
Handcuffed to Hate come Doctor Waite (He tastes the poison now), And Ruth and Judd and a head of blood With horns upon its brow.
Up sashays Nan with her feathery fan From Floradora bright; She never hung for Caesar Young But she's dancing with him tonight.
Here's the bulging hip and the foam-flecked lip Of the mad dog, Vincent Coll, And over there that ill-met pair, Becker and Rosenthal, Here's Legs and Dutch and a dozen such Of braggart bullies and brutes, And each one bends 'neath the weight of friends Who are wearing concrete suits.
Now the damned make way for the double-damned Who emerge with shuffling pace From the nightmare zone of persons unknown, With neither name nor face.
And poor Dot King to one doth cling, Joined in a ghastly jig, While Elwell doth jape at a goblin shape And tickle it with his wig.
See Rothstein pass like breath on a glass, The original Black Sox kid; He riffles the pack, riding piggyback On the killer whose name he hid.
And smeared like brine on a slavering swine, Starr Faithful, once so fair, Drawn from the sea to her debauchee, With the salt sand in her hair.
And still they come, and from the bum The icy sweat doth spray; His white lips scream as in a dream, "For God's sake, let's away! If ever I meet with Pinball Pete I will not seek his gore, Lest a treadmill grim I must trudge with him On the hideous thirteenth floor.
" "For you I rejoice," said Maxie's voice, "And I bid you go in peace, But I am late for a dancing date That nevermore will cease.
So remember, friend, as your way you wend, That it would have happened to you, But I turned the heat on Pinball Pete; You see - I had a daughter, too!" The bum reached out and he tried to shout, But the door in his face was slammed, And silent as stone he rode down alone From the floor of the double-damned.


Written by Mark Twain | Create an image from this poem

The Aged Pilot Man

 On the Erie Canal, it was,
All on a summer's day,
I sailed forth with my parents
Far away to Albany.
From out the clouds at noon that day There came a dreadful storm, That piled the billows high about, And filled us with alarm.
A man came rushing from a house, Saying, "Snub up your boat I pray, Snub up your boat, snub up, alas, Snub up while yet you may.
" Our captain cast one glance astern, Then forward glanced he, And said, "My wife and little ones I never more shall see.
" Said Dollinger the pilot man, In noble words, but few,-- "Fear not, but lean on Dollinger, And he will fetch you through.
" The boat drove on, the frightened mules Tore through the rain and wind, And bravely still, in danger's post, The whip-boy strode behind.
"Come 'board, come 'board," the captain cried, "Nor tempt so wild a storm;" But still the raging mules advanced, And still the boy strode on.
Then said the captain to us all, "Alas, 'tis plain to me, The greater danger is not there, But here upon the sea.
So let us strive, while life remains, To save all souls on board, And then if die at last we must, Let .
.
.
.
I cannot speak the word!" Said Dollinger the pilot man, Tow'ring above the crew, "Fear not, but trust in Dollinger, And he will fetch you through.
" "Low bridge! low bridge!" all heads went down, The laboring bark sped on; A mill we passed, we passed church, Hamlets, and fields of corn; And all the world came out to see, And chased along the shore Crying, "Alas, alas, the sheeted rain, The wind, the tempest's roar! Alas, the gallant ship and crew, Can nothing help them more?" And from our deck sad eyes looked out Across the stormy scene: The tossing wake of billows aft, The bending forests green, The chickens sheltered under carts In lee of barn the cows, The skurrying swine with straw in mouth, The wild spray from our bows! "She balances! She wavers! Now let her go about! If she misses stays and broaches to, We're all"--then with a shout,] "Huray! huray! Avast! belay! Take in more sail! Lord, what a gale! Ho, boy, haul taut on the hind mule's tail!" "Ho! lighten ship! ho! man the pump! Ho, hostler, heave the lead! "A quarter-three!--'tis shoaling fast! Three feet large!--t-h-r-e-e feet!-- Three feet scant!" I cried in fright "Oh, is there no retreat?" Said Dollinger, the pilot man, As on the vessel flew, "Fear not, but trust in Dollinger, And he will fetch you through.
" A panic struck the bravest hearts, The boldest cheek turned pale; For plain to all, this shoaling said A leak had burst the ditch's bed! And, straight as bolt from crossbow sped, Our ship swept on, with shoaling lead, Before the fearful gale! "Sever the tow-line! Cripple the mules!" Too late! There comes a shock! Another length, and the fated craft Would have swum in the saving lock! Then gathered together the shipwrecked crew And took one last embrace, While sorrowful tears from despairing eyes Ran down each hopeless face; And some did think of their little ones Whom they never more might see, And others of waiting wives at home, And mothers that grieved would be.
But of all the children of misery there On that poor sinking frame, But one spake words of hope and faith, And I worshipped as they came: Said Dollinger the pilot man,-- (O brave heart, strong and true!)-- "Fear not, but trust in Dollinger, For he will fetch you through.
" Lo! scarce the words have passed his lips The dauntless prophet say'th, When every soul about him seeth A wonder crown his faith! And count ye all, both great and small, As numbered with the dead: For mariner for forty year, On Erie, boy and man, I never yet saw such a storm, Or one't with it began!" So overboard a keg of nails And anvils three we threw, Likewise four bales of gunny-sacks, Two hundred pounds of glue, Two sacks of corn, four ditto wheat, A box of books, a cow, A violin, Lord Byron's works, A rip-saw and a sow.
A curve! a curve! the dangers grow! "Labbord!--stabbord!--s-t-e-a-d-y!--so!-- Hard-a-port, Dol!--hellum-a-lee! Haw the head mule!--the aft one gee! Luff!--bring her to the wind!" For straight a farmer brought a plank,-- (Mysteriously inspired)-- And laying it unto the ship, In silent awe retired.
Then every sufferer stood amazed That pilot man before; A moment stood.
Then wondering turned, And speechless walked ashore.
Written by Gary Soto | Create an image from this poem

Saturday At The Canal

 I was hoping to be happy by seventeen.
School was a sharp check mark in the roll book, An obnoxious tuba playing at noon because our team Was going to win at night.
The teachers were Too close to dying to understand.
The hallways Stank of poor grades and unwashed hair.
Thus, A friend and I sat watching the water on Saturday, Neither of us talking much, just warming ourselves By hurling large rocks at the dusty ground And feeling awful because San Francisco was a postcard On a bedroom wall.
We wanted to go there, Hitchhike under the last migrating birds And be with people who knew more than three chords On a guitar.
We didn't drink or smoke, But our hair was shoulder length, wild when The wind picked up and the shadows of This loneliness gripped loose dirt.
By bus or car, By the sway of train over a long bridge, We wanted to get out.
The years froze As we sat on the bank.
Our eyes followed the water, White-tipped but dark underneath, racing out of town.
Written by Larry Levis | Create an image from this poem

The Widening Spell Of Leaves

 --The Carpathian Frontier, October, 1968
 --for my brother

Once, in a foreign country, I was suddenly ill.
I was driving south toward a large city famous For so little it had a replica, in concrete, In two-thirds scale, of the Arc de Triomphe stuck In the midst of traffic, & obstructing it.
But the city was hours away, beyond the hills Shaped like the bodies of sleeping women.
Often I had to slow down for herds of goats Or cattle milling on those narrow roads, & for The narrower, lost, stone streets of villages I passed through.
The pains in my stomach had grown Gradually sharper & more frequent as the day Wore on, & now a fever had set up house.
In the villages there wasn't much point in asking Anyone for help.
In those places, where tanks Were bivouacked in shade on their way back From some routine exercise along The Danube, even food was scarce that year.
And the languages shifted for no clear reason From two hard quarries of Slavic into German, Then to a shred of Latin spliced with oohs And hisses.
Even when I tried the simplest phrases, The peasants passing over those uneven stones Paused just long enough to look up once, Uncomprehendingly.
Then they turned Quickly away, vanishing quietly into that Moment, like bark chips whirled downriver.
It was autumn.
Beyond each village the wind Threw gusts of yellowing leaves across the road.
The goats I passed were thin, gray; their hind legs, Caked with dried ****, seesawed along-- Not even mild contempt in their expressionless, Pale eyes, & their brays like the scraping of metal.
Except for one village that had a kind Of museum where I stopped to rest, & saw A dead Scythian soldier under glass, Turning to dust while holding a small sword At attention forever, there wasn't much to look at.
Wind, leaves, goats, the higher passes Locked in stone, the peasants with their fate Embroidering a stillness into them, And a spell over all things in that landscape, Like .
.
.
That was the trouble; it couldn't be Compared to anything else, not even the sleep Of some asylum at a wood's edge with the sound Of a pond's spillway beside it.
But as each cramp Grew worse & lasted longer than the one before, It was hard to keep myself aloof from the threadbare World walking on that road.
After all, Even as they moved, the peasants, the herds of goats And cattle, the spiralling leaves, at least were part Of that spell, that stillness.
After a while, The villages grew even poorer, then thinned out, Then vanished entirely.
An hour later, There were no longer even the goats, only wind, Then more & more leaves blown over the road, sometimes Covering it completely for a second.
And yet, except for a random oak or some brush Writhing out of the ravine I drove beside, The trees had thinned into rock, into large, Tough blonde rosettes of fading pasture grass.
Then that gave out in a bare plateau.
.
.
.
And then, Easing the Dacia down a winding grade In second gear, rounding a long, funneled curve-- In a complete stillness of yellow leaves filling A wide field--like something thoughtlessly, Mistakenly erased, the road simply ended.
I stopped the car.
There was no wind now.
I expected that, & though I was sick & lost, I wasn't afraid.
I should have been afraid.
To this day I don't know why I wasn't.
I could hear time cease, the field quietly widen.
I could feel the spreading stillness of the place Moving like something I'd witnessed as a child, Like the ancient, armored leisure of some reptile Gliding, gray-yellow, into the slightly tepid, Unidentical gray-brown stillness of the water-- Something blank & unresponsive in its tough, Pimpled skin--seen only a moment, then unseen As it submerged to rest on mud, or glided just Beneath the lustreless, calm yellow leaves That clustered along a log, or floated there In broken ringlets, held by a gray froth On the opaque, unbroken surface of the pond, Which reflected nothing, no one.
And then I remembered.
When I was a child, our neighbors would disappear.
And there wasn't a pond of crocodiles at all.
And they hadn't moved.
They couldn't move.
They Lived in the small, fenced-off backwater Of a canal.
I'd never seen them alive.
They Were in still photographs taken on the Ivory Coast.
I saw them only once in a studio when I was a child in a city I once loved.
I was afraid until our neighbor, a photographer, Explained it all to me, explained how far Away they were, how harmless; how they were praised In rituals as "powers.
" But they had no "powers," He said.
The next week he vanished.
I thought Someone had cast a spell & that the crocodiles Swam out of the pictures on the wall & grew Silently & multiplied & then turned into Shadows resting on the banks of lakes & streams Or took the shapes of fallen logs in campgrounds In the mountains.
They ate our neighbor, Mr.
Hirata.
They ate his whole family.
That is what I believed, Then.
.
.
that someone had cast a spell.
I did not Know childhood was a spell, or that then there Had been another spell, too quiet to hear, Entering my city, entering the dust we ate.
.
.
.
No one knew it then.
No one could see it, Though it spread through lawnless miles of housing tracts, And the new, bare, treeless streets; it slipped Into the vacant rows of warehouses & picked The padlocked doors of working-class bars And union halls & shuttered, empty diners.
And how it clung! (forever, if one had noticed) To the brothel with the pastel tassels on the shade Of an unlit table lamp.
Farther in, it feasted On the decaying light of failing shopping centers; It spilled into the older, tree-lined neighborhoods, Into warm houses, sealing itself into books Of bedtime stories read each night by fathers-- The books lying open to the flat, neglected Light of dawn; & it settled like dust on windowsills Downtown, filling the smug cafés, schools, Banks, offices, taverns, gymnasiums, hotels, Newsstands, courtrooms, opium parlors, Basque Restaurants, Armenian steam baths, French bakeries, & two of the florists' shops-- Their plate glass windows smashed forever.
Finally it tried to infiltrate the exact Center of my city, a small square bordered With palm trees, olives, cypresses, a square Where no one gathered, not even thieves or lovers.
It was a place which no longer had any purpose, But held itself aloof, I thought, the way A deaf aunt might, from opinions, styles, gossip.
I liked it there.
It was completely lifeless, Sad & clear in what seemed always a perfect, Windless noon.
I saw it first as a child, Looking down at it from that as yet Unvandalized, makeshift studio.
I remember leaning my right cheek against A striped beach ball so that Mr.
Hirata-- Who was Japanese, who would be sent the next week To a place called Manzanar, a detention camp Hidden in stunted pines almost above The Sierra timberline--could take my picture.
I remember the way he lovingly relished Each camera angle, the unwobbling tripod, The way he checked each aperture against The light meter, in love with all things That were not accidental, & I remember The care he took when focusing; how He tried two different lens filters before He found the one appropriate for that Sensual, late, slow blush of afternoon Falling through the one broad bay window.
I remember holding still & looking down Into the square because he asked me to; Because my mother & father had asked me please To obey & be patient & allow the man-- Whose business was failing anyway by then-- To work as long as he wished to without any Irritations or annoyances before He would have to spend these years, my father said, Far away, in snow, & without his cameras.
But Mr.
Hirata did not work.
He played.
His toys gleamed there.
That much was clear to me .
.
.
.
That was the day I decided I would never work.
It felt like a conversion.
Play was sacred.
My father waited behind us on a sofa made From car seats.
One spring kept nosing through.
I remember the camera opening into the light .
.
.
.
And I remember the dark after, the studio closed, The cameras stolen, slivers of glass from the smashed Bay window littering the unsanded floors, And the square below it bathed in sunlight .
.
.
.
All this Before Mr.
Hirata died, months later, From complications following pneumonia.
His death, a letter from a camp official said, Was purely accidental.
I didn't believe it.
Diseases were wise.
Diseases, like the polio My sister had endured, floating paralyzed And strapped into her wheelchair all through That war, seemed too precise.
Like photographs .
.
.
Except disease left nothing.
Disease was like And equation that drank up light & never ended, Not even in summer.
Before my fever broke, And the pains lessened, I could actually see Myself, in the exact center of that square.
How still it had become in my absence, & how Immaculate, windless, sunlit.
I could see The outline of every leaf on the nearest tree, See it more clearly than ever, more clearly than I had seen anything before in my whole life: Against the modest, dark gray, solemn trunk, The leaves were becoming only what they had to be-- Calm, yellow, things in themselves & nothing More--& frankly they were nothing in themselves, Nothing except their little reassurance Of persisting for a few more days, or returning The year after, & the year after that, & every Year following--estranged from us by now--& clear, So clear not one in a thousand trembled; hushed And always coming back--steadfast, orderly, Taciturn, oblivious--until the end of Time.
Written by Denise Duhamel | Create an image from this poem

Yes

 According to Culture Shock:
A Guide to Customs and Etiquette 
of Filipinos, when my husband says yes,
he could also mean one of the following:
a.
) I don't know.
b.
) If you say so.
c.
) If it will please you.
d.
) I hope I have said yes unenthusiastically enough for you to realize I mean no.
You can imagine the confusion surrounding our movie dates, the laundry, who will take out the garbage and when.
I remind him I'm an American, that all has yeses sound alike to me.
I tell him here in America we have shrinks who can help him to be less of a people-pleaser.
We have two-year-olds who love to scream "No!" when they don't get their way.
I tell him, in America we have a popular book, When I Say No I Feel Guilty.
"Should I get you a copy?" I ask.
He says yes, but I think he means "If it will please you," i.
e.
"I won't read it.
" "I'm trying," I tell him, "but you have to try too.
" "Yes," he says, then makes tampo, a sulking that the book Culture Shock describes as "subliminal hostility .
.
.
withdrawal of customary cheerfulness in the presence of the one who has displeased" him.
The book says it's up to me to make things all right, "to restore goodwill, not by talking the problem out, but by showing concern about the wounded person's well-being.
" Forget it, I think, even though I know if I'm not nice, tampo can quickly escalate into nagdadabog-- foot stomping, grumbling, the slamming of doors.
Instead of talking to my husband, I storm off to talk to my porcelain Kwan Yin, the Chinese goddess of mercy that I bought on Canal Street years before my husband and I started dating.
"The real Kwan Yin is in Manila," he tells me.
"She's called Nuestra Señora de Guia.
Her Asian features prove Christianity was in the Philippines before the Spanish arrived.
" My husband's telling me this tells me he's sorry.
Kwan Yin seems to wink, congratulating me--my short prayer worked.
"Will you love me forever?" I ask, then study his lips, wondering if I'll be able to decipher what he means by his yes.


Written by Allen Ginsberg | Create an image from this poem

Homework

 Homage Kenneth Koch


If I were doing my Laundry I'd wash my dirty Iran
I'd throw in my United States, and pour on the Ivory Soap,
 scrub up Africa, put all the birds and elephants back in
 the jungle,
I'd wash the Amazon river and clean the oily Carib & Gulf of Mexico,
Rub that smog off the North Pole, wipe up all the pipelines in Alaska,
Rub a dub dub for Rocky Flats and Los Alamos, Flush that sparkly
 Cesium out of Love Canal
Rinse down the Acid Rain over the Parthenon & Sphinx, Drain the Sludge
 out of the Mediterranean basin & make it azure again,
Put some blueing back into the sky over the Rhine, bleach the little
 Clouds so snow return white as snow,
Cleanse the Hudson Thames & Neckar, Drain the Suds out of Lake Erie
Then I'd throw big Asia in one giant Load & wash out the blood &
 Agent Orange,
Dump the whole mess of Russia and China in the wringer, squeeze out
 the tattletail Gray of U.
S.
Central American police state, & put the planet in the drier & let it sit 20 minutes or an Aeon till it came out clean
Written by John Betjeman | Create an image from this poem

A Shropshire Lad

 The gas was on in the Institute,
The flare was up in the gym,
A man was running a mineral line,
A lass was singing a hymn,
When Captain Webb the Dawley man,
Captain Webb from Dawley,
Came swimming along the old canal
That carried the bricks to Lawley.
Swimming along - Swimming along - Swimming along from Severn, And paying a call at Dawley Bank while swimming along to Heaven.
The sun shone low on the railway line And over the bricks and stacks And in at the upstairs windows Of the Dawley houses' backs When we saw the ghost of Captain Webb, Webb in a water sheeting, Come dripping along in a bathing dress To the Saturday evening meeting.
Dripping along - Dripping along - To the Congregational Hall; Dripping and still he rose over the sill and faded away in a wall.
There wasn't a man in Oakengates That hadn't got hold of the tale, And over the valley in Ironbridge, And round by Coalbrookdale, How CAptain Webb the Dawley man, Captain Webb from Dawley, Rose rigid and dead from the old canal That carries the bricks to Lawley.
Rigid and dead - Rigid and dead - To the Saturday congregation, Paying a call at Dawley Bank on the way to his destination.
Written by Philip Levine | Create an image from this poem

Black Stone On Top Of Nothing

 Still sober, César Vallejo comes home and finds a black ribbon 
around the apartment building covering the front door.
He puts down his cane, removes his greasy fedora, and begins to untangle the mess.
His neighbors line up behind him wondering what's going on.
A middle-aged woman carrying a loaf of fresh bread asks him to step aside so she can enter, ascend the two steep flights to her apartment, and begin the daily task of preparing lunch for her Monsieur.
Vallejo pretends he hears nothing or perhaps he truly hears nothing so absorbed is he in this odd task consuming his late morning.
Did I forget to mention that no one else can see the black ribbon or understand why his fingers seem so intent on unraveling what is not there? Remember when you were only six and on especially hot days you would descend the shaky steps to the cellar hoping at first that someone, perhaps your mother, would gradually become aware of your absence and feel a sudden seizure of anxiety or terror.
Of course no one noticed.
Mother sat for hours beside the phone waiting, and now and then gazed at summer sunlight blazing through the parlor curtains while below, cool and alone, seated on the damp concrete you watched the same sunlight filter through the rising dust from the two high windows.
Beside the furnace a spider worked brilliantly downward from the burned-out, overhead bulb with a purpose you at that age could still comprehend.
1937 would last only six more months.
It was a Thursday.
Rain was promised but never arrived.
The brown spider worked with or without hope, though when the dusty sunlight caught in the web you beheld a design so perfect it remained in your memory as a model of meaning.
César Vallejo untangled the black ribbon no one else saw and climbed to his attic apartment and gazed out at the sullen rooftops stretching southward toward Spain where his heart died.
I know this.
I've walked by the same building year after year in late evening when the swallows were settling noiselessly in the few sparse trees beside the unused canal.
I've come when the winter snow blinded the distant brooding sky.
I've come just after dawn, I've come in spring, in autumn, in rain, and he was never there.
Written by Patrick Kavanagh | Create an image from this poem

Canal Bank Walk

 Leafy-with-love banks and the green waters of the canal
Pouring redemption for me, that I do
The will of God, wallow in the habitual, the banal,
Grow with nature again as before I grew.
The bright stick trapped, the breeze adding a third Party to the couple kissing on an old seat, And a bird gathering materials for the nest for the Word Eloquently new and abandoned to its delirious beat.
O unworn world enrapture me, encapture me in a web Of fabulous grass and eternal voices by a beech, Feed the gaping need of my senses, give me ad lib To pray unselfconsciously with overflowing speech For this soul needs to be honoured with a new dress woven From green and blue things and arguments that cannot be proven.
Written by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot | Create an image from this poem

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.
Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.
The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers, Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends Or other testimony of summer nights.
The nymphs are departed.
And their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors; 180 Departed, have left no addresses.
Line 161 ALRIGHT.
This spelling occurs also in the Hogarth Press edition— Editor.
By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept .
.
.
Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song, Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.
But at my back in a cold blast I hear The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.
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 190 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, Rattled by the rat's foot only, year to year.
But at my back from time to time I hear The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring Sweeney to Mrs.
Porter in the spring.
O the moon shone bright on Mrs.
Porter And on her daughter 200 They wash their feet in soda water Et O ces voix d'enfants, chantant dans la coupole! Twit twit twit Jug jug jug jug jug jug So rudely forc'd.
Tereu Unreal City Under the brown fog of a winter noon Mr.
Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants 210 C.
i.
f.
London: documents at sight, Asked me in demotic French To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel Followed by a weekend at the Metropole.
At the violet hour, when the eyes and back Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits Like a taxi throbbing waiting, I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives, Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives 220 Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea, The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights Her stove, and lays out food in tins.
Out of the window perilously spread Her drying combinations touched by the sun's last rays, On the divan are piled (at night her bed) Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.
I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest— I too awaited the expected guest.
230 He, the young man carbuncular, arrives, A small house agent's clerk, with one bold stare, One of the low on whom assurance sits As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.
The time is now propitious, as he guesses, The meal is ended, she is bored and tired, Endeavours to engage her in caresses Which still are unreproved, if undesired.
Flushed and decided, he assaults at once; Exploring hands encounter no defence; 240 His vanity requires no response, And makes a welcome of indifference.
(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all Enacted on this same divan or bed; I who have sat by Thebes below the wall And walked among the lowest of the dead.
) Bestows one final patronising kiss, And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit .
.
.
She turns and looks a moment in the glass, Hardly aware of her departed lover; 250 Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass: "Well now that's done: and I'm glad it's over.
" When lovely woman stoops to folly and Paces about her room again, alone, She smoothes her hair with automatic hand, And puts a record on the gramophone.
"This music crept by me upon the waters" And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street.
O City city, I can sometimes hear Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street, 260 The pleasant whining of a mandoline And a clatter and a chatter from within Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls Of Magnus Martyr hold Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.
The river sweats Oil and tar The barges drift With the turning tide Red sails 270 Wide To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.
The barges wash Drifting logs Down Greenwich reach Past the Isle of Dogs.
Weialala leia Wallala leialala Elizabeth and Leicester Beating oars 280 The stern was formed A gilded shell Red and gold The brisk swell Rippled both shores Southwest wind Carried down stream The peal of bells White towers Weialala leia 290 Wallala leialala "Trams and dusty trees.
Highbury bore me.
Richmond and Kew Undid me.
By Richmond I raised my knees Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe.
" "My feet are at Moorgate, and my heart Under my feet.
After the event He wept.
He promised 'a new start'.
I made no comment.
What should I resent?" "On Margate Sands.
300 I can connect Nothing with nothing.
The broken fingernails of dirty hands.
My people humble people who expect Nothing.
" la la To Carthage then I came Burning burning burning burning O Lord Thou pluckest me out O Lord Thou pluckest 310 burning

Book: Reflection on the Important Things