poem for the day: from 'Preludes' by T.S. Eliot

 

 

 

The winter evening settles down

With smells 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.

 

 

Eliot insisted that "The essential advantage for a poet is not to have a beautiful world with which to deal; it is to be able to see beneath both beauty and ugliness; to see the boredom, and the horror, and the glory."  Preludes was the first of Eliot's poetry to be published in the magazine Blast in July 1915.