out on the road in the cold

i like riding in spring and fall the best of all. and the beer in your bag stays cool, y'all

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965). The Waste Land. 1922.

The Waste Land

I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD 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	5
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,	10
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,	15
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,	20
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,	25
(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.	30
Frisch weht der Wind
Der Heimat zu.
Mein Irisch Kind,
Wo weilest du?
'You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;	35
'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,	40
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,	45
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.	50
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.	55
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.
...the rest can be found at http://www.bartleby.com/201/1.html

excerpt from FLOATER (Too Much To Ask) Words and Music by Bob Dylan 2001 Special Rider Music

One of the boss' hangers-on
Comes to call at times you least expect
Try to bully ya - strong arm you - inspire you with fear
It has the opposite effect

Emily Dickinson December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886

A little Snow was here and there

A little Snow was here and there
Disseminated in her Hair --
Since she and I had met and played
Decade had gathered to Decade --

But Time had added not obtained
Impregnable the Rose
For summer too indelible
Too obdurate for Snows --

and now a 2nd poem by emily dickinson

Snow flakes.

I counted till they danced so
Their slippers leaped the town,
And then I took a pencil
To note the rebels down.
And then they grew so jolly
I did resign the prig,
And ten of my once stately toes
Are marshalled for a jig!

Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening Robert Lee Frost (March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963)

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

The Men That Don't Fit In by: Robert Service

There's a race of men that don't fit in, A race that can't stay still; So they break the hearts of kith and kin, And they roam the world at will. They range the field and they rove the flood, And they climb the mountain's crest; Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood, And they don't know how to rest. If they just went straight they might go far; They are strong and brave and true; But they're always tired of the things that are, And they want the strange and new. They say: "Could I find my proper groove, What a deep mark I would make!" So they chop and change, and each fresh move Is only a fresh mistake. And each forgets, as he strips and runs With a brilliant, fitful pace, It's the steady, quiet, plodding ones Who win in the lifelong race. And each forgets that his youth has fled, Forgets that his prime is past, Till he stands one day, with a hope that's dead, In the glare of the truth at last. He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance; He has just done things by half. Life's been a jolly good joke on him, And now is the time to laugh. Ha, ha! He is one of the Legion Lost; He was never meant to win; He's a rolling stone, and it's bred in the bone; He's a man who won't fit in.

PORTRAIT D'UNE FEMME by: Ezra Pound (1885-1972)

OUR mind and you are our Sargasso Sea,

London has swept about you this score years

And bright ships left you this or that in fee:

Ideas, old gossip, oddments of all things,

Strange spars of knowledge and dimmed wares of price.

Great minds have sought you--lacking someone else.

You have been second always. Tragical?

No. You preferred it to the usual thing:

One dull man, dulling and uxorious,

One average mind--with one thought less, each year.

Oh, you are patient, I have seen you sit

Hours, where something might have floated up.

And now you pay one. Yes, you richly pay.

You are a person of some interest, one comes to you

And takes strange gain away:

Trophies fished up; some curious suggestion;

Fact that leads nowhere; and a tale for two,

Pregnant with mandrakes, or with something else

That might prove useful and yet never proves,

That never fits a corner or shows use,

Or finds its hour upon the loom of days:

The tarnished, gaudy, wonderful old work;

Idols and ambergris and rare inlays,

These are your riches, your great store; and yet

For all this sea-hoard of deciduous things,

Strange woods half sodden, and new brighter stuff:

In the slow float of differing light and deep,

No! there is nothing! In the whole and all,

Nothing that's quite your own.

Yet this is you.

"Portrait d'une Femme" is reprinted from Ripostes of Ezra Pound. Ezra Pound. London: Elkin Mathews, 1915.

MORE POEMS BY EZRA POUND

bonus poem, wilfred owen(18 March 1893 – 4 November 1918)

Mental Cases

Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight?
Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows,
Drooping tongues from jaws that slob their relish,
Baring teeth that leer like skulls' teeth wicked?
Stroke on stroke of pain,-but what slow panic,
Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets?
Ever from their hair and through their hands' palms
Misery swelters. Surely we have perished
Sleeping, and walk hell; but who these hellish?

-These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished.
Memory fingers in their hair of murders,
Multitudinous murders they once witnessed.
Wading sloughs of flesh these helpless wander,
Treading blood from lungs that had loved laughter.
Always they must see these things and hear them,
Batter of guns and shatter of flying muscles,
Carnage incomparable, and human squander
Rucked too thick for these men's extrication.

Therefore still their eyeballs shrink tormented
Back into their brains, because on their sense
Sunlight seems a blood-smear; night comes blood-black;
Dawn breaks open like a wound that bleeds afresh.
-Thus their heads wear this hilarious, hideous,
Awful falseness of set-smiling corpses.
-Thus their hands are plucking at each other;
Picking at the rope-knouts of their scourging;
Snatching after us who smote them, brother,
Pawing us who dealt them war and madness.

sonnet #130, William Shakespeare (baptised 26 April 1564 – died 23 April 1616)

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock;Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965)

S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse

A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,

Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.

Ma percioche giammai di questo fondo

Non torno vivo alcun, s'i'odo il vero,

Senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.

1Let us go then, you and I,

2When the evening is spread out against the sky

3Like a patient etherized upon a table;

4Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,

5The muttering retreats

6Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

7And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:

8Streets that follow like a tedious argument

9Of insidious intent

10To lead you to an overwhelming question ...

11Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"

12Let us go and make our visit.

13In the room the women come and go

14Talking of Michelangelo.

15The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,

16The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,

17Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,

18Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,

19Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,

20Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,

21And seeing that it was a soft October night,

22Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

23And indeed there will be time

24For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,

25Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;

26There will be time, there will be time

27To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;

28There will be time to murder and create,

29And time for all the works and days of hands

30That lift and drop a question on your plate;

31Time for you and time for me,

32And time yet for a hundred indecisions,

33And for a hundred visions and revisions,

34Before the taking of a toast and tea.

35In the room the women come and go

36Talking of Michelangelo.

37And indeed there will be time

38To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"

39Time to turn back and descend the stair,

40With a bald spot in the middle of my hair --

41(They will say: 'How his hair is growing thin!")

42My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,

43My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin --

44(They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!")

45Do I dare

46Disturb the universe?

47In a minute there is time

48For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

49For I have known them all already, known them all:

50Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

51I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

52I know the voices dying with a dying fall

53Beneath the music from a farther room.

54 So how should I presume?

55And I have known the eyes already, known them all--

56The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,

57And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,

58When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,

59Then how should I begin

60To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?

61 And how should I presume?

62And I have known the arms already, known them all--

63Arms that are braceleted and white and bare

64(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)

65Is it perfume from a dress

66That makes me so digress?

67Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.

68 And should I then presume?

69 And how should I begin?

70Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets

71And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes

72Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? ...

73I should have been a pair of ragged claws

74Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

* * * *

75And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!

76Smoothed by long fingers,

77Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers,

78Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.

79Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,

80Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?

81But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,

82Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,

83I am no prophet -- and here's no great matter;

84I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,

85And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,

86And in short, I was afraid.

87And would it have been worth it, after all,

88After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,

89Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,

90Would it have been worth while,

91To have bitten off the matter with a smile,

92To have squeezed the universe into a ball

93To roll it towards some overwhelming question,

94To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,

95Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all" --

96If one, settling a pillow by her head

97 Should say: "That is not what I meant at all;

98 That is not it, at all."

99And would it have been worth it, after all,

100Would it have been worth while,

101After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,

102After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor --

103And this, and so much more?--

104It is impossible to say just what I mean!

105But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:

106Would it have been worth while

107If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,

108And turning toward the window, should say:

109 "That is not it at all,

110 That is not what I meant, at all."

111No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;

112Am an attendant lord, one that will do

113To swell a progress, start a scene or two,

114Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,

115Deferential, glad to be of use,

116Politic, cautious, and meticulous;

117Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;

118At times, indeed, almost ridiculous--

119Almost, at times, the Fool.

120I grow old ... I grow old ...

121I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

122Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?

123I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.

124I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

125I do not think that they will sing to me.

126I have seen them riding seaward on the waves

127Combing the white hair of the waves blown back

128When the wind blows the water white and black.

129We have lingered in the chambers of the sea

130By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown

131Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

Notes