Rhapsody on a Windy Night

It's getting chilly in New York (and everywhere else too I suppose). And I've been returning home later and later every evening. My nightly walk to my apartment along lamp-lit 29th Street evoke a certain mood. I want to write about these cold, windy nights and the yellow orbs of street lamps as I see them through the smudged lens of my glasses. But I don't have the energy to write at the moment. My supervisor says I need to sleep more and wake up earlier. (ha) So, I let T.S. Eliot do it for me. I have drafts and half-drafts of posts about a variety of topics, ranging from politics and music to men. And believe me, they are not all melancholy - some aren't even that thoughtful. But with barely enough time to shower between work and sleep, I share this poem as a reminder of how poetry, a beautiful song or a thoughtful image can illuminate even the most dismal of days (or nights).


TWELVE o'clock.
Along the reaches of the street
Held in a lunar synthesis,
Whispering lunar incantations
Dissolve the floors of memory 5
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 10
Midnight shakes the memory
As a madman shakes a dead geranium.

Half-past one,
The street-lamp sputtered,
The street-lamp muttered, 15
The street-lamp said, "Regard that woman
Who hesitates toward 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, 20
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 25
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, 30
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, 35
Slips out its tongue
And devours a morsel of rancid butter.
"So the hand of the child, automatic,
Slipped out and pocketed a toy that was running along the quay.I
could see nothing behind that child's eye. 40
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. 45
Half-past three,
The lamp sputtered
,The lamp muttered in the dark.
The lamp hummed:
"Regard the moon, 50
La lune ne garde aucune rancune,
She winks a feeble eye,
She smiles into corners.
She smooths the hair of the grass.
The moon has lost her memory. 55
A washed-out smallpox cracks her face,
Her hand twists a paper rose,
That smells of dust and eau de Cologne,
She is alone
With all the old nocturnal smells 60T
hat cross and cross across her brain.
"The reminiscence comes
Of sunless dry geraniums
And dust in crevices,
Smells of chestnuts in the streets, 65
And female smells in shuttered rooms,
And cigarettes in corridors
And cocktail smells in bars.

The lamp said,"Four o'clock, 70
Here is the number on the door.
Memory!
You have the key,
The little lamp spreads a ring on the stair.
Mount. 75
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.