preludes

• (bkz: preludes and nocturnes)
• i.
  the winter evening settles down
  with smell of steaks in passageways.
  six o’clock.
  the burnt-out ends of smoky days.
  and now a gusty shower wraps
  the grimy scraps
  of withered leaves about your feet
  and newspapers from vacant lots;
  the showers beat
  on broken blinds and chimney-pots,
  and at the corner of the street
  a lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
  
  and then the lighting of the lamps.
  
  ii.
  the morning comes to consciousness
  of faint stale smells of beer
  from the sawdust-trampled street
  with all its muddy feet that press
  to early coffee-stands.
  with the other masquerades
  that time resumes,
  one thinks of all the hands
  that are raising dingy shades
  in a thousand furnished rooms.
  
  iii.
  you tossed a blanket from the bed,
  you lay upon your back, and waited;
  you dozed, and watched the night revealing
  the thousand sordid images
  of which your soul was constituted;
  they flickered against the ceiling.
  and when all the world came back
  and the light crept up between the shutters
  and you heard the sparrows in the gutters,
  you had such a vision of the street
  as the street hardly understands;
  sitting along the bed’s edge, where
  you curled the papers from your hair,
  or clasped the yellow soles of feet
  in the palms of both soiled hands.
  
  iv.
  his soul stretched tight across the skies
  that fade behind a city block,
  or trampled by insistent feet
  at four and five and six o’clock;
  and short square fingers stuffing pipes,
  and evening newspapers, and eyes
  assured of certain certainties,
  the conscience of a blackened street
  impatient to assume the world.
  
  i am moved by fancies that are curled
  around these images, and cling:
  the notion of some infinitely gentle
  infinitely suffering thing.
  
  wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
  the worlds revolve like ancient women
  gathering fuel in vacant lots.
  
  t.s. eliot