July 27, 2004

Another poem below- this one not mine. And yes, it's a bit of a cop-out because I really am dead beat and don't want to go to bed only to get up in 2 hours to meet this (now) self-imposed daily writing deadline.

This is where my blog's name originates, and it's high time I credited Mr. Eliot, who is one of my favorite poets in spite of any reason he shouldn't be.

Tonight I went to a lounge downtown and heard 4 local poets read as part of the Marin County traveling Poetry series. I knew two of the poets, and they were in fine form. The other two were new to me, one of them quite good. Many of the poems were about simply daily things seen through the eyes of the artist. I like to read those things, and I like to write them. But I also like work that is imbued with a depth and some allusion (even an ironic one) to the heart of the human condition. Eliot was good at that.

 

 
The Journey of the Magi

'A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For the journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins,
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death,
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

    -- T. S. Eliot