'Till Human Voices Wake Us-

And We Drown.

Eliot

I have a book.  It is a TS Eliot compilation published sometime in the 1950s, that I picked up somewhere in my world travels at some second hand bookstore.

Over time, it has become my Bible.  That's right, folks, this Witch has a text of religious sorts.  She has a Bard, in a manner of speaking... or writing, as it were.

It goes everywhere with me; it lives in a constant state of motion because I live in a constant state of motion.   The only difference between his book and my passport is the stamps.  And... well... the photo of me.

I have written in every spare margin with Chinese pencils and Australian pens; I have memorized entire passages; I have accidentally torn bits off and rather intentionally taped those bits back in.  I have read poems aloud- to birds, to no one, to foreigners who did not understand any single word of it.  And I have lived and died by those words- those worn, weary, wrenching words.  I have not known another poet the way I know Eliot- nor has another poet known me in such a way.

For every moment I have, every emotion I feel- Eliot has a line.  He has a word, a stanza, an entire poem.  His literature helped me to define myself.  He gave a voice- a worn, weary, wrenching voice- to the unrelenting madness that unfolded in my head, that unfolds in my head.  I feel intimately connected to his work.  The first time I heard this voice was upon reading the Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock, when I finally reached the final stanza:

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown. 


Nothing, to my adolescent mind (and you should not be even remotely surprised that I began dabbling in Eliot as an adolescent), ever read so perfectly.  I became obsessed with the power of the last line.  And that obsession has grown, lingeringly and deliciously, over time.

All of it all of it all of it!  I cannot express or communicate the depth of my fervor for this poet's poetry! Other people get songs stuck in their heads- I get poems.  Read Part III of East Coker (out of Four Quartets) and be utterly captivated by the following:

So I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing. 

And then tell me that poetry can't be stuck in your head.

To be honest- that final Prufrock line has been stuck in my head all day- prompting this particular blog.

For each and every one of you I wish an Eliot- a Bard, a Bible, a Voice.

Beautiful.