Let's look into agony

My feeling, I must tell you,
is probably very much like
yours, when I run into a suf-
ferer, en passant. 

    "Oh, yeah, well, I know your
    complaint, but did they never
    tell you about language, grow-
    ing up?"

    "I mean, you know, the drug,
    the cheap posture, the grub-
    by garbage clothes to punish
    your father: didn't they let
    you know poetry, your voice,
    could lift all this away?"

 

    But it never fails, you know,
    much as we'd never want it to,
    that something intervenes, to
    amount to perfect sense.

    And we don't get a poet, but
    we get what we bargained for.
    They notoriously never come
    when we call, anyway, so we
    say, we came out of this OK.

    I, for my part, don't
    believe a word of this.
    It's just a guy thing,
    as we observe in Don
    Alfonso, to cover his
    bets with cynicism. In
    fact we do get a poem,
    every now and again.


















T.S. Eliot
1888 - 1965