{"id":360,"date":"2003-03-07T21:55:05","date_gmt":"2003-03-08T01:55:05","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=360"},"modified":"2007-03-17T11:02:24","modified_gmt":"2007-03-17T15:02:24","slug":"why-i-never-liked-ts-eliot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/?p=360","title":{"rendered":"Why I Never Liked T.S. Eliot"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chard Whitlow<\/span>
\n(Mr. Eliot’s Sunday Evening Postscript)<\/p>\n

As we get older we do not get any younger.
\nSeasons return, and today I am fifty-five,
\nAnd this time last year I was fifty-four,
\nAnd this time next year I shall be sixty-two.
\nAnd I cannot say I should like (to speak for myself)
\nTo see my time over again — if you can call it time:
\nFidgeting uneasily under a draughty stair,
\nOr counting sleepless nights in the crowded tube.<\/p>\n

There are certain precautions — though none of them very reliable —
\nAgainst the blast from bombs and the flying splinter,
\nBut not against the blast from heaven, vento dei venti<\/i>,
\nThe wind within a wind unable to speak for wind;
\nAnd the frigid burnings of purgatory will not be touched
\nBy any emollient.
\n I think you will find this put,
\nBetter than I could ever hope to express it,
\nIn the words of Kharma: “It is, we believe,
\nIdle to hope that the simple stirrup-pump
\nWill extinguish hell.”
\n Oh, listeners,
\nAnd you especially who have turned off the wireless,
\nAnd sit in Stoke or Basingstoke listening appreciatively to the silence,
\n(Which is also the silence of hell) pray, not for your skins, but your souls.<\/p>\n

And pray for me also under the draughty stair.
\nAs we get older we do not get any younger.<\/p>\n

And pray for Kharma under the holy mountain.<\/p>\n

–Henry Reed<\/p>\n

Mitigating factor:<\/b> Eliot said about this poem: “Most parodies of one’s own work strike one as very poor. In fact one is apt to think that one could parody oneself much better. (In fact some critics have said that I have done so.) But this one deserves the success it has had.”<\/p>\n

(Update:<\/b> Felicity McCarthy<\/a> comments.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chard Whitlow (Mr. Eliot’s Sunday Evening Postscript) As we get older we do not get any younger. Seasons return, and today I am fifty-five, And this time last year I was fifty-four, And this time next year I shall be sixty-two. And I cannot say I should like (to speak for myself) To see my […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry","category-2-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}