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Date Posted: 16:01:26 09/23/04 Thu
Author: TSE
Author Host/IP: 68.232.138.165
Subject: Portrait of a Lady
In reply to: t s eliot 's message, "i grow old" on 15:36:09 09/23/04 Thu

Portrait of a Lady
 
 
         Thou hast committed—
Fornication: but that was in another country,
And besides, the wench is dead.

The Jew of Malta.
 
 

I
AMONG the smoke and fog of a December afternoon
You have the scene arrange itself—as it will seem to do—
With “I have saved this afternoon for you”;
And four wax candles in the darkened room,
Four rings of light upon the ceiling overhead,         5
An atmosphere of Juliet’s tomb
Prepared for all the things to be said, or left unsaid.
We have been, let us say, to hear the latest Pole
Transmit the Preludes, through his hair and fingertips.
“So intimate, this Chopin, that I think his soul         10
Should be resurrected only among friends
Some two or three, who will not touch the bloom
That is rubbed and questioned in the concert room.”
—And so the conversation slips
Among velleities and carefully caught regrets         15
Through attenuated tones of violins
Mingled with remote cornets
And begins.
 
“You do not know how much they mean to me, my friends,
And how, how rare and strange it is, to find         20
In a life composed so much, so much of odds and ends,
[For indeed I do not love it … you knew? you are not blind!
How keen you are!]
To find a friend who has these qualities,
Who has, and gives         25
Those qualities upon which friendship lives.
How much it means that I say this to you—
Without these friendships—life, what cauchemar!”
 
Among the windings of the violins
And the ariettes         30
Of cracked cornets
Inside my brain a dull tom-tom begins
Absurdly hammering a prelude of its own,
Capricious monotone
That is at least one definite “false note.”         35
—Let us take the air, in a tobacco trance,
Admire the monuments,
Discuss the late events,
Correct our watches by the public clocks.
Then sit for half an hour and drink our bocks.         40
 

II
Now that lilacs are in bloom
She has a bowl of lilacs in her room
And twists one in his fingers while she talks.
“Ah, my friend, you do not know, you do not know
What life is, you who hold it in your hands”;         45
(Slowly twisting the lilac stalks)
“You let it flow from you, you let it flow,
And youth is cruel, and has no remorse
And smiles at situations which it cannot see.”
I smile, of course,         50
And go on drinking tea.
“Yet with these April sunsets, that somehow recall
My buried life, and Paris in the Spring,
I feel immeasurably at peace, and find the world
To be wonderful and youthful, after all.”         55
 
The voice returns like the insistent out-of-tune
Of a broken violin on an August afternoon:
“I am always sure that you understand
My feelings, always sure that you feel,
Sure that across the gulf you reach your hand.         60
 
You are invulnerable, you have no Achilles’ heel.
You will go on, and when you have prevailed
You can say: at this point many a one has failed.
 
But what have I, but what have I, my friend,
To give you, what can you receive from me?         65
Only the friendship and the sympathy
Of one about to reach her journey’s end.
 
I shall sit here, serving tea to friends….”
 
I take my hat: how can I make a cowardly amends
For what she has said to me?         70
You will see me any morning in the park
Reading the comics and the sporting page.
Particularly I remark
An English countess goes upon the stage.
A Greek was murdered at a Polish dance,         75
Another bank defaulter has confessed.
I keep my countenance,
I remain self-possessed
Except when a street piano, mechanical and tired
Reiterates some worn-out common song         80
With the smell of hyacinths across the garden
Recalling things that other people have desired.
Are these ideas right or wrong?
 

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