RHAPSODY ON A WINDY NIGHT
by: T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)
Twelve o'clock.
Along the reaches of the street
Held in a lunar synthesis,
Whispering lunar incantations
Dissolve the floors of memory
And all its clear relations,
Its divisions and precisions,
Every street lamp that I pass
Beats like a fatalistic drum,
And through the spaces of the dark
Midnight shakes the memory
As a madman shakes a dead geranium.
Half-past one,
The street lamp sputtered,
The street lamp muttered,
The street lamp said, "Regard that woman
Who hesitates towards you in the light of the door
Which opens on her like a grin.
You see the border of her dress
Is torn and stained with sand,
And you see the corner of her eye
Twists like a crooked pin."
The memory throws up high and dry
A crowd of twisted things;
A twisted branch upon the beach
Eaten smooth, and polished
As if the world gave up
The secret of its skeleton,
Stiff and white.
A broken spring in a factory yard,
Rust that clings to the form that the strength has left
Hard and curled and ready to snap.
Half-past two,
The street lamp said,
"Remark the cat which flattens itself in the gutter,
Slips out its tongue
And devours a morsel of rancid butter."
So the hand of a child, automatic,
Slipped out and pocketed a toy that was running along the quay.
I could see nothing behind that child's eye.
I have seen eyes in the street
Trying to peer through lighted shutters,
And a crab one afternoon in a pool,
An old crab with barnacles on his back,
Gripped the end of a stick which I held him.
Half-past three,
The lamp sputtered,
The lamp muttered in the dark.
The lamp hummed:
"Regard the moon,
La lune ne garde aucune rancune,
She winks a feeble eye,
She smiles into corners.
She smoothes the hair of the grass.
The moon has lost her memory.
A washed-out smallpox cracks her face,
Her hand twists a paper rose,
That smells of dust and old Cologne,
She is alone
With all the old nocturnal smells
That cross and cross across her brain."
The reminiscence comes
Of sunless dry geraniums
And dust in crevices,
Smells of chestnuts in the streets,
And female smells in shuttered rooms,
And cigarettes in corridors
And cocktail smells in bars.
The lamp said,
"Four o'clock,
Here is the number on the door.
Memory!
You have the key,
The little lamp spreads a ring on the stair,
Mount.
The bed is open; the tooth-brush hangs on the wall,
Put your shoes at the door, sleep, prepare for life."
The last twist of the knife.
Happy Sunday everyone! Just thought I'd ruin everyone's day with a poem about utter isolationism. Not really, it's just a good poem. As I mentioned, this poem talks a lot about isolation and a lack of communication. If we look at the poem, there are only a few spoken words, and those are said by a lamp-post. He only has one toothbrush, indicating that he lives alone. The closest he can get to another human being is a prostitute who can't even step out of the doorway to entice him in. The closest he can get to another living thing is to have a crusty old crab grab onto a stick. Most of the imagery in this poem has nothing to do with communication. All of the imagery is either visual or nasal, no sound, no touch (no taste either, but that's not really that important).
There are also a lot of symbols that indicate a sense of distance. Prostitutes are people's excuses for relationships, but there's no real connection. Crabs are crusty, hard-skinned loners who don't connect with others. The moon, used a lot in this poem, is bright, but cold. The moon will watch you with her "feeble eye," but "She is alone." The isolationism is overwhelming and depressing.
I don't really have any personal connections with the thematics of this story, so I really don't have much to talk about on that end. I do have some experiences with walking around at night, and much of the moon imagery draws me back to those times. I also love this poem for the almost lyrical nature, it flows so well off the tongue and it's just beautiful to read, independent of the message.
Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed it, and thought it as beautiful as I did.
Signing off ~Sam Zimmerman
