Tuesday, August 6, 2019

You let it flow from you...

TAO 78, translated by Stephen Mitchell

Tao 43, translated by Stephen Mitchell



From:  “Portrait of a Lady” by T. S. Eliot


II
Now that lilacs are in bloom
She has a bowl of lilacs in her room
And twists one in her fingers while she talks.
“Ah, my friend, you do not know, you do not know
What life is, you who hold it in your hands”;        45
(Slowly twisting the lilac stalks)
“You let it flow from you, you let it flow,
And youth is cruel, and has no remorse
And smiles at situations which it cannot see.”
I smile, of course,        50
And go on drinking tea.
“Yet with these April sunsets, that somehow recall
My buried life, and Paris in the Spring,
I feel immeasurably at peace, and find the world
To be wonderful and youthful, after all.”

**********



2 comments:

PhilipH said...

What a serene example of peaceful poetry - T.S. Elliot genius gives us.

Marion said...

Yes, Philip. I love all of Eliot’s poetry so much. He’s one of the few poets whose poems I still work on memorizing so I can meditate on them when I can’t sleep. I’ve almost got all of “Prufrock” memorized. xo