SONG LYRICS & POEMS
Lyrics of songs Damian has sung in performances, and poetry and passages he has recited in performances
Contents:
| Blue Bayou | Epitaphs Of The War | O Tell Me The Truth About Love | To His Coy Mistress |
Some of the lyric selections are accompanied by instrumental (nonvocal) midi versions of the songs. To play, pause/stop or adjust the volume of a song, click on the audio control box accompanying each lyric selection. (If no audio control box appears, no music is available.)
(Roy Orbison / Joe Melson)
(From Dreamcatcher - a portion sung by Damian Lewis in the film (to the Roy Orbison recording), and a sung by Damian Lewis and Thomas Jane in the alternate ending)
I feel so bad, I've got a worried mind
I'm so lonesome all the time
Since I left my baby behind
On Blue Bayou
Saving nickels, saving dimes
Working 'till the sun don't shine
Looking forward to happier times
On Blue Bayou
I'm going back some day,
Come what may
To Blue Bayou
Where you sleep all day,
And the catfish play
On Blue Bayou
All those fishing boats,
With their sails afloat
If I could only see
That familiar sunrise
Through sleepy eyes
How happy I'd be
Oh, to see my baby again
And to be with some of my friends
Maybe I'd be happy then
On Blue Bayou
Saving nickels, saving dimes
Working 'till the sun don't shine
Looking forward to happier times
On Blue Bayou
I'm going back some day,
Gonna stay
On Blue Bayou
Where the folks are fine
And the world is mine
On Blue Bayou
Ah, that girl of mine, by my side
The silver moon and the evening tide
Oh, some sweet day, I'm gonna take away
This hurting inside
Oh, I'll never be blue
My dreams come true
On Blue Bayou
Oh, I'll never be blue
My dreams come true
On Blue Bayou
(Dennis Linde)
(From Berkeley Square Ball, London, July 19, 2005 - performed by Damian Lewis as Elvis Presley)
Lord almighty, feel my temperature rising.
Higher, higher, it's burning through to my soul.
Girl, girl, girl, you've gone and set me on fire.
My brain is flaming. I don't know which way to go.
Your kisses lift me higher, like the sweet song of a choir.
And you light my morning sky with burning love.
Ooh, ooh, ooh, I feel my temperature rising.
Help me, I'm flaming, I must be a hundred and nine.
Burning, burning, burning, and nothing can cool me.
I just might turn into smoke, but I feel fine.
Your kisses lift me higher, like the sweet song of a choir.
And you light my morning sky with burning love
It's coming closer, the flames are now licking my body.
Won't you help me, I feel like I'm slipping away.
It's hard to breathe, my chest is a-heaving.
Lord have mercy, I'm burning a hole where I lay.
Your kisses lift me higher, like the sweet song of a choir.
And you light my morning sky with burning love.
I'm just a hunk, a hunk of burning love.
A hunk, a hunk of burning love ...
Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)
(Brian Holland / Eddie Holland / Lamont Dozier)
(From Keane - sung by Damian Lewis)
Sugar pie honey bunch
You know that I love you
I can't help myself
I love you and nobody else
In and out my life
You come and you go
Leaving just your picture behind
And I've kissed it a thousand times
When you snap your finger, or wink your eye
I come runnin' to you
I'm tied to your apron strings
and there's nothing that I can do
I can't help myself, no I can't help myself
Sugar pie honey bunch
I'm weaker than a man should be
I can't help myself
I'm a fool in love you see
Wanna tell you I don't love you, tell you that we're through
And I've tried
But everytime I see your face
I get all choked up inside
When I call your name, girl it starts the flame
(Burning in my heart, tearing it all apart)
No matter how I try, my love I cannot hide, 'cause
Sugar pie honey bunch
You know that I'm weak for you
I can't help myself
I love you and nobody else
Sugar pie honey bunch
Do anything you ask me to
I can't help myself
I love you and nobody else
Sugar pie honey bunch
You know that I love you
I can't help myself, no I can't help myself
(Dylan Thomas)
(From Cancer Research UK Carol Concert, St. Paul's Cathedral, London, December 14, 2004 - a portion read by Damian Lewis)
One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.
All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find. In goes my hand into that wool-white bell-tongued ball of holidays resting at the rim of the carol-singing sea, and out come Mrs. Prothero and the firemen.
It was on the afternoon of the Christmas Eve, and I was in Mrs. Prothero's garden, waiting for cats, with her son Jim. It was snowing. It was always snowing at Christmas. December, in my memory, is white as Lapland, though there were no reindeers. But there were cats. Patient, cold and callous, our hands wrapped in socks, we waited to snowball the cats. Sleek and long as jaguars and horrible-whiskered, spitting and snarling, they would slink and sidle over the white back-garden walls, and the lynx-eyed hunters, Jim and I, fur-capped and moccasined trappers from Hudson Bay, off Mumbles Road, would hurl our deadly snowballs at the green of their eyes. The wise cats never appeared.
We were so still, Eskimo-footed arctic marksmen in the muffling silence of the eternal snows - eternal, ever since Wednesday - that we never heard Mrs. Prothero's first cry from her igloo at the bottom of the garden. Or, if we heard it at all, it was, to us, like the far-off challenge of our enemy and prey, the neighbor's polar cat. But soon the voice grew louder.
"Fire!" cried Mrs. Prothero, and she beat the dinner-gong.
And we ran down the garden, with the snowballs in our arms, toward the house; and smoke, indeed, was pouring out of the dining-room, and the gong was bombilating, and Mrs. Prothero was announcing ruin like a town crier in Pompeii. This was better than all the cats in Wales standing on the wall in a row. We bounded into the house, laden with snowballs, and stopped at the open door of the smoke-filled room.
Something was burning all right; perhaps it was Mr. Prothero, who always slept there after midday dinner with a newspaper over his face. But he was standing in the middle of the room, saying, "A fine Christmas!" and smacking at the smoke with a slipper.
"Call the fire brigade," cried Mrs. Prothero as she beat the gong.
"There won't be there," said Mr. Prothero, "it's Christmas."
There was no fire to be seen, only clouds of smoke and Mr. Prothero standing in the middle of them, waving his slipper as though he were conducting.
"Do something," he said. And we threw all our snowballs into the smoke - I think we missed Mr. Prothero - and ran out of the house to the telephone box.
"Let's call the police as well," Jim said. "And the ambulance." "And Ernie Jenkins, he likes fires."
But we only called the fire brigade, and soon the fire engine came and three tall men in helmets brought a hose into the house and Mr. Prothero got out just in time before they turned it on. Nobody could have had a noisier Christmas Eve. And when the firemen turned off the hose and were standing in the wet, smoky room, Jim's Aunt, Miss. Prothero, came downstairs and peered in at them. Jim and I waited, very quietly, to hear what she would say to them. She said the right thing, always. She looked at the three tall firemen in their shining helmets, standing among the smoke and cinders and dissolving snowballs, and she said, "Would you like anything to read?"
Years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the color of red-flannel petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlors, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the English and the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse, when we rode the daft and happy hills bareback, it snowed and it snowed. But here a small boy says: "It snowed last year, too. I made a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea."
"But that was not the same snow," I say. "Our snow was not only shaken from white wash buckets down the sky, it came shawling out of the ground and swam and drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees; snow grew overnight on the roofs of the houses like a pure and grandfather moss, minutely -ivied the walls and settled on the postman, opening the gate, like a dumb, numb thunder-storm of white, torn Christmas cards."
"Were there postmen then, too?"
"With sprinkling eyes and wind-cherried noses, on spread, frozen feet they crunched up to the doors and mittened on them manfully. But all that the children could hear was a ringing of bells."
"You mean that the postman went rat-a-tat-tat and the doors rang?"
"I mean that the bells the children could hear were inside them."
"I only hear thunder sometimes, never bells."
"There were church bells, too."
"Inside them?"
"No, no, no, in the bat-black, snow-white belfries, tugged by bishops and storks. And they rang their tidings over the bandaged town, over the frozen foam of the powder and ice-cream hills, over the crackling sea. It seemed that all the churches boomed for joy under my window; and the weathercocks crew for Christmas, on our fence."
"Get back to the postmen"
"They were just ordinary postmen, found of walking and dogs and Christmas and the snow. They knocked on the doors with blue knuckles ...."
"Ours has got a black knocker...."
"And then they stood on the white Welcome mat in the little, drifted porches and huffed and puffed, making ghosts with their breath, and jogged from foot to foot like small boys wanting to go out."
"And then the presents?"
"And then the Presents, after the Christmas box. And the cold postman, with a rose on his button-nose, tingled down the tea-tray-slithered run of the chilly glinting hill. He went in his ice-bound boots like a man on fishmonger's slabs.
"He wagged his bag like a frozen camel's hump, dizzily turned the corner on one foot, and, by God, he was gone."
"Get back to the Presents."
"There were the Useful Presents: engulfing mufflers of the old coach days, and mittens made for giant sloths; zebra scarfs of a substance like silky gum that could be tug-o'-warred down to the galoshes; blinding tam-o'-shanters like patchwork tea cozies and bunny-suited busbies and balaclavas for victims of head-shrinking tribes; from aunts who always wore wool next to the skin there were mustached and rasping vests that made you wonder why the aunts had any skin left at all; and once I had a little crocheted nose bag from an aunt now, alas, no longer whinnying with us. And pictureless books in which small boys, though warned with quotations not to, would skate on Farmer Giles' pond and did and drowned; and books that told me everything about the wasp, except why."
"Go on the Useless Presents."
"Bags of moist and many-colored jelly babies and a folded flag and a false nose and a tram-conductor's cap and a machine that punched tickets and rang a bell; never a catapult; once, by mistake that no one could explain, a little hatchet; and a celluloid duck that made, when you pressed it, a most unducklike sound, a mewing moo that an ambitious cat might make who wished to be a cow; and a painting book in which I could make the grass, the trees, the sea and the animals any colour I pleased, and still the dazzling sky-blue sheep are grazing in the red field under the rainbow-billed and pea-green birds. Hardboileds, toffee, fudge and allsorts, crunches, cracknels, humbugs, glaciers, marzipan, and butterwelsh for the Welsh. And troops of bright tin soldiers who, if they could not fight, could always run. And Snakes-and-Families and Happy Ladders. And Easy Hobbi-Games for Little Engineers, complete with instructions. Oh, easy for Leonardo! And a whistle to make the dogs bark to wake up the old man next door to make him beat on the wall with his stick to shake our picture off the wall. And a packet of cigarettes: you put one in your mouth and you stood at the corner of the street and you waited for hours, in vain, for an old lady to scold you for smoking a cigarette, and then with a smirk you ate it. And then it was breakfast under the balloons."
"Were there Uncles like in our house?"
"There are always Uncles at Christmas. The same Uncles. And on Christmas morning, with dog-disturbing whistle and sugar fags, I would scour the swatched town for the news of the little world, and find always a dead bird by the Post Office or by the white deserted swings; perhaps a robin, all but one of his fires out. Men and women wading or scooping back from chapel, with taproom noses and wind-bussed cheeks, all albinos, huddles their stiff black jarring feathers against the irreligious snow. Mistletoe hung from the gas brackets in all the front parlors; there was sherry and walnuts and bottled beer and crackers by the dessertspoons; and cats in their fur-abouts watched the fires; and the high-heaped fire spat, all ready for the chestnuts and the mulling pokers. Some few large men sat in the front parlors, without their collars, Uncles almost certainly, trying their new cigars, holding them out judiciously at arms' length, returning them to their mouths, coughing, then holding them out again as though waiting for the explosion; and some few small aunts, not wanted in the kitchen, nor anywhere else for that matter, sat on the very edge of their chairs, poised and brittle, afraid to break, like faded cups and saucers."
Not many those mornings trod the piling streets: an old man always, fawn-bowlered, yellow-gloved and, at this time of year, with spats of snow, would take his constitutional to the white bowling green and back, as he would take it wet or fire on Christmas Day or Doomsday; sometimes two hale young men, with big pipes blazing, no overcoats and wind blown scarfs, would trudge, unspeaking, down to the forlorn sea, to work up an appetite, to blow away the fumes, who knows, to walk into the waves until nothing of them was left but the two furling smoke clouds of their inextinguishable briars. Then I would be slap-dashing home, the gravy smell of the dinners of others, the bird smell, the brandy, the pudding and mince, coiling up to my nostrils, when out of a snow-clogged side lane would come a boy the spit of myself, with a pink-tipped cigarette and the violet past of a black eye, cocky as a bullfinch, leering all to himself.
I hated him on sight and sound, and would be about to put my dog whistle to my lips and blow him off the face of Christmas when suddenly he, with a violet wink, put his whistle to his lips and blew so stridently, so high, so exquisitely loud, that gobbling faces, their cheeks bulged with goose, would press against their tinsled windows, the whole length of the white echoing street. For dinner we had turkey and blazing pudding, and after dinner the Uncles sat in front of the fire, loosened all buttons, put their large moist hands over their watch chains, groaned a little and slept. Mothers, aunts and sisters scuttled to and fro, bearing tureens. Auntie Bessie, who had already been frightened, twice, by a clock-work mouse, whimpered at the sideboard and had some elderberry wine. The dog was sick. Auntie Dosie had to have three aspirins, but Auntie Hannah, who liked port, stood in the middle of the snowbound back yard, singing like a big-bosomed thrush. I would blow up balloons to see how big they would blow up to; and, when they burst, which they all did, the Uncles jumped and rumbled. In the rich and heavy afternoon, the Uncles breathing like dolphins and the snow descending, I would sit among festoons and Chinese lanterns and nibble dates and try to make a model man-o'-war, following the Instructions for Little Engineers, and produce what might be mistaken for a sea-going tramcar.
Or I would go out, my bright new boots squeaking, into the white world, on to the seaward hill, to call on Jim and Dan and Jack and to pad through the still streets, leaving huge footprints on the hidden pavements.
"I bet people will think there's been hippos."
"What would you do if you saw a hippo coming down our street?"
"I'd go like this, bang! I'd throw him over the railings and roll him down the hill and then I'd tickle him under the ear and he'd wag his tail."
"What would you do if you saw two hippos?"
Iron-flanked and bellowing he-hippos clanked and battered through the scudding snow toward us as we passed Mr. Daniel's house.
"Let's post Mr. Daniel a snow-ball through his letter box."
"Let's write things in the snow."
"Let's write, 'Mr. Daniel looks like a spaniel' all over his lawn."
Or we walked on the white shore. "Can the fishes see it's snowing?"
The silent one-clouded heavens drifted on to the sea. Now we were snow-blind travelers lost on the north hills, and vast dewlapped dogs, with flasks round their necks, ambled and shambled up to us, baying "Excelsior." We returned home through the poor streets where only a few children fumbled with bare red fingers in the wheel-rutted snow and cat-called after us, their voices fading away, as we trudged uphill, into the cries of the dock birds and the hooting of ships out in the whirling bay. And then, at tea the recovered Uncles would be jolly; and the ice cake loomed in the center of the table like a marble grave. Auntie Hannah laced her tea with rum, because it was only once a year.
Bring out the tall tales now that we told by the fire as the gaslight bubbled like a diver. Ghosts whooed like owls in the long nights when I dared not look over my shoulder; animals lurked in the cubbyhole under the stairs and the gas meter ticked. And I remember that we went singing carols once, when there wasn't the shaving of a moon to light the flying streets. At the end of a long road was a drive that led to a large house, and we stumbled up the darkness of the drive that night, each one of us afraid, each one holding a stone in his hand in case, and all of us too brave to say a word. The wind through the trees made noises as of old and unpleasant and maybe webfooted men wheezing in caves. We reached the black bulk of the house. "What shall we give them? Hark the Herald?"
"No," Jack said, "Good King Wencelas. I'll count three." One, two three, and we began to sing, our voices high and seemingly distant in the snow-felted darkness round the house that was occupied by nobody we knew. We stood close together, near the dark door. Good King Wencelas looked out On the Feast of Stephen ... And then a small, dry voice, like the voice of someone who has not spoken for a long time, joined our singing: a small, dry, eggshell voice from the other side of the door: a small dry voice through the keyhole. And when we stopped running we were outside our house; the front room was lovely; balloons floated under the hot-water-bottle-gulping gas; everything was good again and shone over the town.
"Perhaps it was a ghost," Jim said. "
Perhaps it was trolls," Dan said, who was always reading.
"Let's go in and see if there's any jelly left," Jack said. And we did that.
Always on Christmas night there was music. An uncle played the fiddle, a cousin sang "Cherry Ripe," and another uncle sang "Drake's Drum." It was very warm in the little house. Auntie Hannah, who had got on to the parsnip wine, sang a song about Bleeding Hearts and Death, and then another in which she said her heart was like a Bird's Nest; and then everybody laughed again; and then I went to bed. Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steady falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept.
(Cyril Horne)
(From The Josephine Hart Poetry Hour - World War One Poets and The Josephine Hart Poetry Programme - a portion read by Damian Lewis)
Six of us lay in a Dugout
At ease with our limbs astretch,
And worshipped a feminine picture
Cut from a week-old ‘Sketch’.
We gazed at her silken stockings,
We studied her Cupid bow,
And we thought of the suppers we used to buy
And the girls we used to know,
And we all, in our several fashions,
Paid toll to the Lady’s charms,
From the man of a hundred passions
To the Subaltern child-in-arms.
Never the sketch of a master
So jealously kept and prized,
Never a woman of flesh and blood
So truly idealized.
And because of her tender ankle,
And her coiffure – distinctly French –
We called her ‘La Belle Dolores’ –
‘The Vivandiere of the Trench.’
The Married Man
When I turned about in the small Dugout
My glance on the picture tarried.
So I hide me away from the fair display
Remembering I was married.
An Officer's Tribute
Laddies, I despise the female species,
Though they say that love affairs are sweet.
So I do not care about the picture,
Though she's awfully neat about the feet.
Well, I've a very easy conscience,
Yet I find it hard to sleep a'nights.
But it's that after so much bloodshed,
I'm unnerved by looking at such sights.
So I'll gaze no more upon the picture,
Less my thoughts from righteousness should stray.
I shall just forget she's in the Dugout,
Only, do not take the lass away.
The Captain
The captain paused at the Dugout door,
In his breathless way, he observed, Oh, Lor!
What a pearl of a girl, you chaps! My word!
I'd buy her a quart of the best 'n bird!
A box of the gaety! Lor! Fun!
I'd do the thing as it should be done.
Suffer it, marry's a perfect flaw.
And what could a fellow wish for more?
Sensuous music, a dreamy band,
A delicate pressure of the hand,
And after a last liqueur or so,
A whispered word in the hall. What, ho!
I'd drive her home in the daylight drab,
And trust her luck in the taxicab.
(Wilfred Owen)
(From The Josephine Hart Poetry Hour - World War One Poets and The Josephine Hart Poetry Programme - read by Damian Lewis)
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! -- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime ...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.
(Rudyard Kipling)
(From The Josephine Hart Poetry Hour - World War One Poets and The Josephine Hart Poetry Programme - a portion read by Damian Lewis)
"Equality of Sacrifice"
A. "I was a Have."
B. "I was a "have-not."
(Together.) "What hast thou given which I gave not?"
A Servant
We were together since the War began.
He was my servant -- and the better man.
A Son
My son was killed while laughing at some jest. I would I knew
What it was, and it might serve me in a time when jests are few.
An Only Son
I have slain none except my Mother. She
(Blessing her slayer) died of grief for me.
Ex-Clerk
Pity not! The army gave
Freedom to a timid slave:
In which freedom did he find
Strength of body, will, and mind:
By which strength he came to prove
Mirth, companionship, and love:
For which love to death he went:
In which death he lies content.
The Wonder
Body and spirit I surrendered whole
To harsh instructors - and received a soul ...
If mortal man could change me through and through
From all I was -- what may the God not do?
Hindu Sepoy in France
This man in his own country prayed we know not to what powers.
We pray them to reward him for his bravery in ours.
The Coward
I could not look on death, which being known,
Men led me to him, blindfold and alone.
Shock
My name, my speech, my self I had forgot.
My wife and children came -- I knew them not.
I died. My mother followed. At her call
And on her bosom I remembered all.
A Grave Near Cairo
Gods of the Nile, should this stout fellow here
Get out -- get out! He knows not shame nor fear.
Pelicans In The Wilderness
(A Grave Near Halfa)
The blown sand heaps on me, that none may learn
Where I am laid for whom my children grieve. ...
O wings that beat at dawning, ye return
Out of the desert to your young at eve!
Two Canadian Memorials
1
We giving all gained all.
Neither lament us nor praise.
Only in all things recall,
It is fear, not death that slays.
2
From little towns in a far land we came,
To save our honour and a world aflame.
By little towns in a far land we sleep;
And trust that world we won for you to keep.
The Favour
Death favoured me from the first, well knowing I could not endure
To wait on him day by day. He quitted my betters and came
Whistling over the fields, and, when he had made all sure,
"Thy line is at end," he said, "but at least I have saved its name."
The Beginner
On the first hour of my first day
In the front trench I fell.
(Children in boxes at a play
Stand up to watch it well.)
R. A. F. (Aged Eighteen)
Laughing through clouds, his milk-teeth still unshed,
Cities and men he smote from overhead.
His deaths delivered, he returned to play
Childlike, with childish things now put away.
The Refined Man
I was of delicate mind. I stepped aside for my needs,
Disdaining the common office. I was seen from afar and killed. ...
How is this matter for mirth? Let each man be judged by his deeds.
I have laid my price to live with myself on the terms that I willed.
Native Water-Carrier (M. E. F.)
Prometheus brought down fire to men.
This brought up water.
The Gods are jealous -- now, as then,
Giving no quarter.
Bombed In London
On land and sea I strove with anxious care
To escape conscription. It was in the air!
The Sleepy Sentinel
Faithless the watch that I kept: now I have none to keep.
I was slain because I slept: now I am slain I sleep.
Let no man reproach me again; whatever watch is unkept --
I sleep because I am slain. They slew me because I slept.
Batteries Out Of Ammunition
If any mourn us in the workshop, say
We died because the shift kept holiday.
Common Form
If any question why we died,
Tell them, because our fathers lied.
A Dead Statesman
I could not dig: I dared not rob:
Therefore I lied to please the mob.
Now all my lies are proved untrue
And I must face the men I slew.
What tale shall serve me here among
Mine angry and defrauded young?
The Rebel
If I had clamoured at Thy gate
For gift of life on earth,
And, thrusting through the souls that wait,
Flung headlong into birth --
Even then, even then, for gin and snare
About my pathway spread,
Lord, I had mocked Thy thoughtful care
Before I joined the dead!
But now? ... I was beneath Thy hand
Ere yet the planets came.
And now -- though planets pass, I stand
The witness to Thy shame.
The Obedient
Daily, though no ears attended,
Did my prayers arise.
Daily, though no fire descended
Did I sacrifice.
Though my darkness did not lift,
Though I faced no lighter odds,
Though the Gods bestowed no gift,
None the less,
None the less, I served the Gods!
A Drifter Off Tarentum
He from the wind-bitten north with ship and companions descended.
Searching for eggs of death spawned by invisible hulls.
Many he found and drew forth. Of a sudden the fishery ended
In flame and a clamorous breath not new to the eye-pecking gulls.
Destroyers In Collision
For Fog and Fate no charm is found
To lighten or amend.
I, hurrying to my bride, was drowned --
Cut down by my best friend.
Convoy Escort
I was a shepherd to fools
Causelessly bold or afraid.
They would not abide by my rules.
Yet they escaped. For I stayed.
Unknown Female Corpse
Headless, lacking foot and hand,
Horrible I come to land.
I beseech all women's sons
Know I was a mother once.
Raped And Revenged
One used and butchered me: another spied
Me broken - for which thing an hundred died.
So it was learned among the heathen hosts
How much a freeborn woman's favour costs.
Salonikan Grave
I have watched a thousand days
Push out and crawl into night
Slowly as tortoises.
Now I, too, follow these.
It is fever, and not the fight --
Time, not battle - that slays.
The Bridegroom
Call me not false, beloved,
If, from thy scarce-known breast
So little time removed,
In other arms I rest.
For this more ancient bride
Whom coldly I embrace
Was constant at my side
Before I saw thy face.
Our marriage, often set --
By miracle delayed --
At last is consummate,
And cannot be unmade.
Live, then, whom life shall cure.
Almost, of memory,
And leave us to endure
Its immortality.
V. A. D. (Mediterranean)
Ah, would swift ships had never been, for then we ne'er had found,
These harsh Aegean rocks between, this little virgin drowned,
Whom neither spouse nor child shall mourn, but men she nursed through pain
And -- certain keels for whose return the heathen look in vain.
Actors
On a Memorial Tablet in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-On-Avon
We counterfeited once for your disport
Men's joy and sorrow; but our day has passed.
We pray you pardon all where we fell short --
Seeing we were your servants to this last.
Journalists
On a Panel in the Hall of the Institute of Journalists
We have served our day.
(W. H. Auden)
(From The Josephine Hart Poetry Hour: Auden - Truth Out Of Time - read by Damian Lewis)
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
(Edward Thomas)
(From Essential Poems To Fall In Love With - read by Damian Lewis)
Like the touch of rain she was
On a man's flesh and hair and eyes
When the joy of walking thus
Has taken him by surprise:
With the love of the storm he burns,
He sings, he laughs, well I know how,
But forgets when he returns
As I shall not forget her "Go now."
Those two words shut a door
Between me and the blessed rain
That was never shut before
And will not open again.
(Philip Johnstone)
(From Newsnight Review 05/29/09 - read by Damian Lewis)
Ladies and gentlemen, this is High Wood,
Called by the French, Bois des Fourneaux,
The famous spot which in Nineteen-Sixteen,
July, August and September was the scene
Of long and bitterly contested strife,
By reason of its High commanding site.
Observe the effect of shell-fire in the trees
Standing and fallen; here is wire; this trench
For months inhabited, twelve times changed hands;
(They soon fall in), used later as a grave.
It has been said on good authority
That in the fighting for this patch of wood
Were killed somewhere above eight thousand men,
Of whom the greater part were buried here,
This mound on which you stand being ...
Madame, please,
You are requested kindly not to touch
Or take away the Company's property
As souvenirs; you'll find we have on sale
A large variety, all guaranteed.
As I was saying, all is as it was,
This is an unknown British officer,
The tunic having lately rotted off.
Please follow me -- this way ...
The path, sir, please
The ground which was secured at great expense
The Company keeps absolutely untouched,
And in that dug-out (genuine) we provide
Refreshments at a reasonable rate.
You are requested not to leave about
Paper, or ginger-beer bottles, or orange-peel,
There are waste-paper-baskets at the gate.
(Anthony Anaxagorou)
(From Newsnight Review 05/29/09 - read by Damian Lewis)
A man stands inside the noise of the world,
But all he hears is peace,
A man stands inside the stillness of a virgin field,
But all he hears is noise,
All a man ever hears is himself
(Rupert Brooke)
(From Essential Poems To Fall In Love With - a portion read by Damian Lewis)
When I see you, who were so wise and cool,
Gazing with silly sickness on that fool
You've given your love to, your adoring hands
Touch his so intimately that each understands,
I know, most hidden things; and when I know
Your holiest dreams yield to the stupid bow
Of his red lips, and that the empty grace
Of those strong legs and arms, that rosy face,
Has beaten your heart to such a flame of love,
That you have given him every touch and move,
Wrinkle and secret of you, all your life,
---Oh! then I know I'm waiting, lover-wife,
For the great time when love is at a close,
And all its fruit's to watch the thickening nose
And sweaty neck and dulling face and eye,
That are yours, and you, most surely, till you die!
Day after day you'll sit with him and note
The greasier tie, the dingy wrinkling coat;
As prettiness turns to pomp, and strength to fat,
And love, love, love to habit!
And after that,
When all that's fine in man is at an end,
And you, that loved young life and clean, must tend
A foul sick fumbling dribbling body and old,
When his rare lips hang flabby and can't hold
Slobber, and you're enduring that worst thing,
Senility's queasy furtive love-making,
And searching those dear eyes for human meaning,
Propping the bald and helpless head, and cleaning
A scrap that life's flung by, and love's forgotten,---
Then you'll be tired; and passion dead and rotten;
And he'll be dirty, dirty!
O lithe and free
And lightfoot, that the poor heart cries to see,
That's how I'll see your man and you! --
But you
-- Oh, when that time comes, you'll be dirty too!
(Jerry Herman)
(From Posh & Becks' Big Impression - a portion sung by Damian Lewis)
Dolly:
I have always been a woman who arranges things,
for the pleasure -- and the profit -- it derives.
I have always been a woman who arranges things,
like furniture and daffodils and lives.
If you want your sister courted,
Brother wed, or cheese imported:
Just leave everything to me.
If you want your roof inspected,
Eyebrows tweezed, or bills collected:
Just leave everything to me.
If you want your daughter dated,
Or some marriage consummated,
for a rather modest fee.
If you want a husband spotted,
Boyfriend traced, or chicken potted:
I'll arrange for making all arrangements
Just leave everything to me.
If you want your ego bolstered,
Muscles toned, or chair upholstered:
Just leave everything to me.
Charming social introductions,
Expert mandolin instructions:
Just leave everything to me.
If you want your culture rounded,
French improved, or torso pounded:
With a ten year guarantee.
If you want a birth recorded,
Collies bred, or kittens ported:
I'll proceed to plan the whole procedure
Just leave everything to me.
Mr. Sullivan:
Where to, Dolly?
Dolly:
Yonkers, New York, to handle a highly personalmatter for
Mr. Horace Vandergelder, the well-known, unmarried,half-a-millionaire.
Mr. Sullivan:
Gonna marry him yourself, Dolly?
Dolly:
Why, Mr. Sullivan, whatever put such apreposterous idea into my head -- your head!)
Dolly:
If you want a law abolished,
Jury swayed, or toenails polished:
Just leave everything to me.
If you want your liver tested,
Glasses made, cash invested:
Just leave everything to me.
If you want your children coddled,
Corsets pulled, or furs remodeled,
or some nice, fresh fricassee.
If you want your bustle shifted,
Wedding planned, or bosom lifted --
Don't be ashamed girls,
Life is full of secrets, and I keep 'em!
I'll discretely use my own discretion
I'll arrange for making all arrangements
I'll proceed to plan the whole procedure
Just leave everything to me!
O Tell Me The Truth About Love
(W. H. Auden)
(From The Josephine Hart Poetry Hour: Auden - Truth Out Of Time - read by Damian Lewis)
Some say love's a little boy,
And some say it's a bird,
Some say it makes the world go around,
Some say that's absurd,
And when I asked the man next-door,
Who looked as if he knew,
His wife got very cross indeed,
And said it wouldn't do.
Does it look like a pair of pyjamas,
Or the ham in a temperance hotel?
Does its odour remind one of llamas,
Or has it a comforting smell?
Is it prickly to touch as a hedge is,
Or soft as eiderdown fluff?
Is it sharp or quite smooth at the edges?
O tell me the truth about love.
Our history books refer to it
In cryptic little notes,
It's quite a common topic on
The Transatlantic boats;
I've found the subject mentioned in
Accounts of suicides,
And even seen it scribbled on
The backs of railway guides.
Does it howl like a hungry Alsatian,
Or boom like a military band?
Could one give a first-rate imitation
On a saw or a Steinway Grand?
Is its singing at parties a riot?
Does it only like Classical stuff?
Will it stop when one wants to be quiet?
O tell me the truth about love.
I looked inside the summer-house;
It wasn't over there;
I tried the Thames at Maidenhead,
And Brighton's bracing air.
I don't know what the blackbird sang,
Or what the tulip said;
But it wasn't in the chicken-run,
Or underneath the bed.
Can it pull extraordinary faces?
Is it usually sick on a swing?
Does it spend all its time at the races,
or fiddling with pieces of string?
Has it views of its own about money?
Does it think Patriotism enough?
Are its stories vulgar but funny?
O tell me the truth about love.
When it comes, will it come without warning
Just as I'm picking my nose?
Will it knock on my door in the morning,
Or tread in the bus on my toes?
Will it come like a change in the weather?
Will its greeting be courteous or rough?
Will it alter my life altogether?
O tell me the truth about love.
(John Ball)
(From Opening Gathering For Wake Up To Trade Justice All-Night Vigil, Westminster Abbey, London, April 15, 2005 - excerpts below read by Damian Lewis)
My good people, things cannot go well till everything be made common, and there are neither peasants nor gentlemen, but we shall all be united together, and the lords shall be no greater masters than ourselves. What have we deserved that we should be kept thus enslaved? What reasons can they give to show that they are greater lords than we, save by making us toil and labour, so that they can spend? They are clothed in velvet and soft leather furred with ermine, while we wear coarse cloth; they have their wines, spices and good bread, while we have the drawings of the chaff, and drink water. They have handsome houses and manors, and we the pain and travail, the rain and wind, in the fields. And it is from our labour that they get the means to maintain their estates. We are called their slaves, and if we do not serve them readily, we are beaten. And we have no sovereign to whom we may complain, or who will hear us, or do us justice.
Let us go to the King, and tell him of our slavery; and tell him we shall have it otherwise, or else we will provide a remedy ourselves. And if we go together, all manner of people that are now in bondage will follow us, with the intent to be made free. And when the King sees us, we shall have some remedy, either by justice or otherwise.
(Charles Aznavour / Herbert Kretzmer)
(From Jeffrey Archer: The Truth - a portion sung and played on piano by Damian Lewis)
She may be the face I can't forget
The trace of pleasure or regret
Maybe my treasure or the price I have to pay
She may be the song that summer sings
May be the chill that autumn brings
May be a hundred different things
Within the measure of a day
She may be the beauty or the beast
May be the famine or the feast
May turn each day into a Heaven or a Hell
She may be the mirror of my dreams
A smile reflected in a stream
She may not be what she may seem
Inside her shell ...
She, who always seems so happy in a crowd
Whose eyes can be so private and so proud
No one's allowed to see them when they cry
She maybe the love that cannot hope to last
May come to me from shadows in the past
That I remember 'till the day I die
She maybe the reason I survive
The why and wherefore I'm alive
The one I care for through the rough and ready years
Me, I'll take the laughter and her tears
And make them all my souvenirs
For where she goes I've got to be
The meaning of my life is
She ... She
Oh, she ...
(Mick Jones)
(From Chromophobia - Damian plays guitar to a portion of the song (to the Clash recording))
Darling, you got to let me know
Should I stay or should I go?
If you say that you are mine
I'll be here 'til the end of time
So you got to let me know
Should I stay or should I go?
It's always tease, tease, tease
(Siempre - coqueteando y engañando)
You're happy when I'm on my knees
(Me arrodilla y estás feliz)
One day is fine, next is black
(Un día bien el otro negro)
So if you want me off your back
(Al rededar en tu espalda)
Well, come on and let me know
(Me tienes que decir)
Should I stay or should I go?
(¿Me debo ir o quedarme?)
Should I stay or should I go now?
Should I stay or should I go now?
If I go there will be trouble
And if I stay it will be double
So come on and let me know
This indecision's bugging me
(Esta indecisión me molesta)
If you don't want me, set me free
(Si no me quieres, líbrame)
Exactly who'm I supposed to be?
(Dígame que debo ser)
Don't you know which clothes even fit me?
(¿Sabes qué ropa me queda?)
Come on and let me know
(Me tienes que decir)
Should I cool it or should I blow?
(¿Me debo ir o quedarme?)
Should I stay or should I go now?
(¿Yo me frío o lo soplo?)
Should I stay or should I go now?
(¿Yo me frío o lo soplo?)
If I go there will be trouble
(Si me voy - va a ver peligro)
And if I stay it will be double
(Si me quedo sera el doble)
So you got to let me know
(Me tienes que decir)
Should I stay or should I go?
(William Shakespeare)
(From Shakespeare Retold: Much Ado About Nothing - recited by Damian Lewis and Sarah Parrish)
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
(Pat Benatar)
(From Keane - recited / sung by Damian Lewis)
Tell me why the stars do shine
Tell me why the ivy twines
Tell me why the sky's so blue
And then I'll tell you just why I love you
Because God made the stars to shine
Because God made the ivy twine
Because God made the sky so blue
Because God made you, that's why I love you
Tell me why the stars do shine
Tell me why the ivy twines
Because God made the sky so blue
Because God made you, that's why I love you
(Ross Sutherland)
(From Newsnight Review 05/29/09 - read by Damian Lewis)
Attempt to tessellate everything
you've never wanted
and ever known.
Cut the phone. Bleed the radiators.
Cancel bills, subscriptions, friendships.
Tell Steve to go fuck himself.
Introduce your creditors
to those who owe you favours.
Find something creepy
to offer your neighbours:
a small key, a stethoscope.
I thought you might like this ...
Use 'mate' like a newsagent.
Meet Claire, but fail to notice.
Do not set out a timetable of withdrawal.
Do not return your library books.
Do not go back for your coat.
Do not hard-talk the homeless.
Do not stare longingly up at the clock tower.
Stop taking yourself so seriously.
This is your final warning.
Put on 'Uptown Top Rankin'
in the first pub you drank in.
Try to enjoy the boredom.
If you can, spread it around.
Come midnight, throw
a glow-in-the-dark frisbee
off the highest point in town.
(Andrew Marvell)
(From Essential Poems To Fall In Love With - a portion read by Damian Lewis)
Had we but World enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster then empires and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.
But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song: then worms shall try
That long-preserved virginity,
And your quaint honor turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust;
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapped power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of Life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
(Retta Bowen)
(From Newsnight Review 05/29/09 - read by Damian Lewis)
To understand nothing finally but the sly betrayals,
the way the body suffers indignities at rest
or responds to the lightest touch in sleep;
the way we mooch across the carpet in shoddy slippers
with a cup of tea, as though that tea might save us.
Last night I walked the tenements of every hour --
bedroom, toilet, kitchen, dammit -- surprised
by the modicum of space, the frankness of fridge and door
and the cold resorts; stood unverved in makeshift lights,
then snapped them off to a scorch of dark.
Only in glimpses can we know what we are born for;
all morning the back door stands wide in alarm
on the ease of rain that is pardoning the garden,
the wind chimes jostling for their claim on sound.
(W. H. Auden)
(From The Josephine Hart Poetry Hour: Auden - Truth Out Of Time - read by Damian Lewis)
(To JS/07 M 378
This Marble Monument
Is Erected by the State)
He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.
(Alfred Noyes)
(From The Josephine Hart Poetry Hour - World War One Poets and The Josephine Hart Poetry Programme - a portion read by Damian Lewis)
The cymbals crash and the dancers walk
With long silk stockings and arms of chalk.
Butterfly skirts and white breasts bare
And shadows of dead men watching them there.
Shadows of dead men stand by the wall
Watching the fun of the victory ball.
They do not reproach, because they know
If they're forgotten, it's better so.
Under the dancing feet are the graves
Dazzling, motley, long, white waves.
Brushed by the palm fronds, grapple and whirl
Ox hide matron and slim white girl.
Fat, wet bodies go waddling by
Girdled in satin, though God knows why.
Gripped by satyrs in white and black
With fat white hands on the fat white back.
See, there is one child fresh from school
Learning the ropes as the old hands rule.
God, how the dead men chuckle again
As she begs for a dose of the best cocaine.
What do you think we should find, said the shade
When the last shot echoed and peace was made?
Christ, laughed the fleshless jaws of a friend
I thought they'd be praying for worlds to mend.
Making Earth better or something silly
Like, like washing hair or Piccadilly.
They've a sense of humor, these women of ours
These exquisite lilies, these fresh, young flowers.
Shh, said the statesman standing near
I'm glad they keep busy, their thoughts elsewhere.
Oh, we mustn't reproach them, they're young, you see
Ahh, said the dead men, so are we.
Victory! victory! On to the dance!
Back to the jungle, the new beasts prance.
God, how the dead men grin by the wall
Watching the fun of the victory ball.
(T. S. Eliot)
(From The Josephine Hart Poetry Hour, The British Library, London, March 3, 2008 - read by Damian Lewis and Harriet Walter)
I. The Burial of the Dead
"Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent: Sibylla ti theleis; respondebat illa: apothanein thelo."
For Ezra Pound
il miglior fabbro.
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke's,
My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
Frisch weht der Wind
Der Heimat zu
Mein Irisch Kind,
Wo weilest du?
"You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
"They called me the hyacinth girl."
-- Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Od' und leer das Meer.
Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
The lady of situations.
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.
Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,
Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:
One must be so careful these days.
Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying "Stetson!
"You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
"That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
"Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
"Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
"Oh keep the Dog far hence, that's friend to men,
"Or with his nails he'll dig it up again!
"You! hypocrite lecteur! -- mon semblable, -- mon frère!"
II. A Game of Chess
The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Glowed on the marble, where the glass
Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines
From which a golden Cupidon peeped out
(Another hid his eyes behind his wing)
Doubled the flames of sevenbranched candelabra
Reflecting light upon the table as
The glitter of her jewels rose to meet it,
From satin cases poured in rich profusion;
In vials of ivory and coloured glass
Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes,
Unguent, powdered, or liquid -- troubled, confused
And drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the air
That freshened from the window, these ascended
In fattening the prolonged candle-flames,
Flung their smoke into the laquearia,
Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling.
Huge sea-wood fed with copper
Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone,
In which sad light a carved dolphin swam.
Above the antique mantel was displayed
As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene
The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king
So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale
Filled all the desert with inviolable voice
And still she cried, and still the world pursues,
"Jug Jug" to dirty ears.
And other withered stumps of time
Were told upon the walls; staring forms
Leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed.
Footsteps shuffled on the stair.
Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair
Spread out in fiery points
Glowed into words, then would be savagely still.
"My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me.
"Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak.
"What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?
"I never know what you are thinking. Think."
I think we are in rats' alley
Where the dead men lost their bones.
"What is that noise?"
The wind under the door.
"What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?"
Nothing again nothing.
"Do
"You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember
"Nothing?"
I remember
Those are pearls that were his eyes.
"Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?"
But
O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag --
It's so elegant
So intelligent
"What shall I do now? What shall I do?"
I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street
"With my hair down, so. What shall we do to-morrow?
"What shall we ever do?"
The hot water at ten.
And if it rains, a closed car at four.
And we shall play a game of chess,
Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.
When Lil's husband got demobbed, I said --
I didn't mince my words, I said to her myself,
Hurry Up Please Its Time
Now Albert's coming back, make yourself a bit smart.
He'll want to know what you done with that money he gave you
To get yourself some teeth. He did, I was there.
You have them all out, Lil, and get a nice set,
He said, I swear, I can't bear to look at you.
And no more can't I, I said, and think of poor Albert,
He's been in the army four years, he wants a good time,
And if you don't give it him, there's others will, I said.
Oh is there, she said. Something o' that, I said.
Then I'll know who to thank, she said, and give me a straight look.
Hurry Up Please Its Time
If you don't like it you can get on with it, I said.
Others can pick and choose if you can't.
But if Albert makes off, it won't be for lack of telling.
You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique.
(And her only thirty-one.)
I can't help it, she said, pulling a long face,
It's them pills I took, to bring it off, she said.
(She's had five already, and nearly died of young George.)
The chemist said it would be alright, but I've never been the same.
You are a proper fool, I said.
Well, if Albert won't leave you alone, there it is, I said,
What you get married for if you don't want children?
Hurry Up Please Its Time
Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had a hot gammon,
And they asked me in to dinner, to get the beauty of it hot --
Hurry Up Please Its Time
Hurry Up Please Its Time
Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May. Goonight.
Ta ta. Goonight. Goonight.
Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.
III. The Fire Sermon
The river's tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf
Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind
Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.
Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.
The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,
Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends
Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed.
And their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors;
Departed, have left no addresses.
By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept ...
Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,
Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.
But at my back in a cold blast I hear
The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.
A rat crept softly through the vegetation
Dragging its slimy belly on the bank
While I was fishing in the dull canal
On a winter evening round behind the gashouse
Musing upon the king my brother's wreck
And on the king my father's death before him.
White bodies naked on the low damp ground
And bones cast in a little low dry garret,
Rattled by the rat's foot only, year to year.
But at my back from time to time I hear
The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring
Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring.
O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter
And on her daughter
They wash their feet in soda water
Et O ces voix d'enfants, chantant dans la coupole!
Twit twit twit
Jug jug jug jug jug jug
So rudely forc'd.
Tereu
Unreal City
Under the brown fog of a winter noon
Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant
Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants
C.i.f. London: documents at sight,
Asked me in demotic French
To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel
Followed by a weekend at the Metropole.
At the violet hour, when the eyes and back
Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits
Like a taxi throbbing waiting,
I Tiresias , though blind, throbbing between two lives,
Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see
At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives
Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,
The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights
Her stove, and lays out food in tins.
Out of the window perilously spread
Her drying combinations touched by the sun's last rays,
On the divan are piled (at night her bed)
Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.
I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs
Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest --
I too awaited the expected guest.
He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,
A small house agent's clerk, with one bold stare,
One of the low on whom assurance sits
As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.
The time is now propitious, as he guesses,
The meal is ended, she is bored and tired,
Endeavours to engage her in caresses
Which still are unreproved, if undesired.
Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;
Exploring hands encounter no defence;
His vanity requires no response,
And makes a welcome of indifference.
(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all
Enacted on this same divan or bed;
I who have sat by Thebes below the wall
And walked among the lowest of the dead.)
Bestows one final patronising kiss,
And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit ...
She turns and looks a moment in the glass,
Hardly aware of her departed lover;
Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:
"Well now that's done: and I'm glad it's over."
When lovely woman stoops to folly and
Paces about her room again, alone,
She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,
And puts a record on the gramophone.
"This music crept by me upon the waters"
And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street.
O City city, I can sometimes hear
Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street,
The pleasant whining of a mandoline
And a clatter and a chatter from within
Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls
Of Magnus Martyr hold
Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.
The river sweats
Oil and tar
The barges drift
With the turning tide
Red sails
Wide
To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.
The barges wash
Drifting logs
Down Greenwich reach
Past the Isle of Dogs.
Weialala leia
Wallala leialala
Elizabeth and Leicester
Beating oars
The stern was formed
A gilded shell
Red and gold
The brisk swell
Rippled both shores
Southwest wind
Carried down stream
The peal of bells
White towers
Weialala leia
Wallala leialala
"Trams and dusty trees.
Highbury
bore me. Richmond and Kew
Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees
Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe."
"My feet are at Moorgate, and my heart
Under my feet. After the event
He wept. He promised ‘a new start'.
I made no comment. What should I resent?"
"On Margate Sands.
I can connect
Nothing with nothing.
The broken fingernails of dirty hands.
My people humble people who expect
Nothing."
la la
To Carthage then I came
Burning burning burning burning
O Lord Thou pluckest me out
O Lord Thou pluckest
burning
IV. Death by Water
Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss.
A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.
V. What The Thunder Said
After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and palace and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience
Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
If there were only water amongst the rock
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain
There is not even solitude in the mountains
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
From doors of mudcracked houses
If there were water
And no rock
If there were rock
And also water
And water
A spring
A pool among the rock
If there were the sound of water only
Not the cicada
And dry grass singing
But sound of water over a rock
Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But there is no water
Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
-- But who is that on the other side of you?
What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal
A woman drew her long black hair out tight
And fiddled whisper music on those strings
And bats with baby faces in the violet light
Whistled, and beat their wings
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall
And upside down in air were towers
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.
In this decayed hole among the mountains
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home.
It has no windows, and the door swings,
Dry bones can harm no one.
Only a cock stood on the rooftree
Co co rico co co rico
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain
Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
Waited for rain, while the black clouds
Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
The jungle crouched, humped in silence.
Then spoke the thunder
Da
Datta: what have we given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed
Which is not to be found in our obituaries
Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
In our empty rooms
Da
Dayadhvam: I have heard the key
Turn in the door once and turn once only
We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison
Only at nightfall, aetherial rumours
Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus
Da
Damyata: The boat responded
Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar
The sea was calm, your heart would have responded
Gaily, when invited, beating obedient
To controlling hands
I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
Shall I at least set my lands in order?
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down
Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam ceu chelidon -- O swallow swallow
Le Prince d'Aquitaine a la tour abolie
These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih shantih shantih
(Isobel Carter Heywood)
(From Opening Gathering For Wake Up To Trade Justice All-Night Vigil, Westminster Abbey, London, April 15, 2005 - read by Damian Lewis and Adjoa Andoh)
There can be no greater priority for us than an uncompromising allegiance to the recreation of a society and a world in which men and women stand on common ground, holding all things in common, encouraged to make justice in relationships where there is a commitment to mutual well-being, growth, choice; - a world not built on the bodies of the poor, but a common-wealth in the most literal and non-imperialist sense of what the word might mean. Holding our wealth in common.
We go, comforted and strengthened by the power of love in history, the power for right-relation in history, the power of justice in this world.
We go believing that either we will re-create the world, or we will destroy it.
We go now, responsible for what happens in the world.
We move as a body -
- seeking a common-wealth
- that we will break down with our indifference
- or build up with our lives.
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