Uploaded on January 25, 2012
… 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 gutter,
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 your feet
In the palms of both soiled hands. …
—T. S. Eliot
The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909 to 1950
01.25.2024: I tried hard with Eliot, but he never kept my attention long enough.