S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun s’i’odo il vero
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.
Let us go then you and I
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go through certain half-deserted streets
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question …
Oh do not ask “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys
Slipped by the terrace made a sudden leap
And seeing that it was a soft October night
Curled once about the house and fell asleep.
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street
Rubbing its back upon the window panes;
There will be time there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet
There will be time to murder and create
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me
And time yet for a hundred indecisions
And for a hundred visions and revisions
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
And indeed there will be time
To wonder “Do I dare?” and “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)
My morning coat my collar mounting firmly to the chin
My necktie rich and modest but asserted by a simple pin—
(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already known them all:
Have known the evenings mornings afternoons
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
And I have known the eyes already known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase
And when I am formulated sprawling on a pin
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?
And I have known the arms already known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
Shall I say I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves leaning out of windows?
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
And the afternoon the evening sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers
Asleep … tired … or it malingers.
Stretched on the floor here beside you and me.
Should I after tea and cakes and ices
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted wept and prayed
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat and snicker
And in short I was afraid.
And would it have been worth it after all
After the cups the marmalade the tea
Among the porcelain among some talk of you and me
Would it have been worth while
To have bitten off the matter with a smile
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question
To say: “I am Lazarus come from the dead
Come back to tell you all I shall tell you all”—
If one settling a pillow by her head
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;
That is not it at all.”
And would it have been worth it after all
Would it have been worth while
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets
After the novels after the teacups after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl
And turning toward the window should say:
“That is not it at all
That is not what I meant at all.”
No! I am not Prince Hamlet nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord one that will do
To swell a progress start a scene or two
Advise the prince; no doubt an easy tool
Deferential glad to be of use
Politic cautious and meticulous;
Full of high sentence but a bit obtuse;
At times indeed almost ridiculous—
Almost at times the Fool.
I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us and we drown.