Sara J. (kefuwa)’s Reviews > The Penguin Book of Contemporary Verse: 1918-1960 > Status Update

Ash on an old man's sleeve
Is all the ash the burnt roses leave.
Dust in the air suspended
Marks the place where a story ended.
Dust inbreathed was a house -
The wall, the wainscot and the mouse.
The death of hope and despair,
This is the death of air.

- T. S. Eliot "Little Gidding II"

found it! continuing onwardsss...

i seem to have misplaced this volume. tch. moving to stalled shelf in the mean time.

Rain - he could hear it rustling through the dark;
Fragrance and passionless music woven as one;
Warm rain on drooping roses; pattering showers
Behind the thunder, but a trickling peace,
Gently and slowly washing life away.

Night, with a gust of wind, was in the ward,
Blowing the curtain to a glimmering curve.
Night. He was blind; he could not see the stars
Glinting among the wraiths of wandering cloud;
Queer blots of colour, purple, scarlet, green,
Flickered and faded in his drowning eyes.

Not yet inert, but with a tortured breast
At hint of that bleak gulf - his last farewell;
Pining for peace, assurance, pause and rest,
Yet slave to what he loves past words to tell;