Monday, July 11, 2011

Death By Water

Another in honor the Bill Callahan show ("with the grace of a corpse/in a riptide")


(from The Waste Land)


IV. Death By Water

Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss.
          A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
          Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.


T.S. Eliot