Simorgh Press

The Waste Land, Lines 60-68 Real is a city. Poetic maps it out. Unreal paints it with brown fog. With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine. Real are the people. Poetic sees them flow. Unreal follows them uphill and over the river. So many ...so many. Real are the landmarks. Poetic calls them king and saint. Unreal casts them as characters. London Bridge is falling down. Real is the time. Poetic counts with sighs. Unreal begins at the final bell. Hurry up it’s time. Real is life. Poetic feels the seasons. Unreal sees death undone. In my end is my beginning. Real feels weary. Poetic hangs its head. Unreal fixes eyes to the pavement. I would that I were dead, she used to say. We live in the life of real. We breathe with the power of a poem. We wonder in the realm of unreal. In my beginning is my end.

Another reading of The Waste Land, Lines 43-59 Fame catches a cold.  Fortune clears her throat. She tells whatever can be told From stories Waite & Rider wrote. Wisdom deals the cards.  She plays a wicked game. The deck is short, the rules are hard, The names begin to sound the same. The wheel turns.  The world walks In circles.  Thank you everyone. A fisherman up on the docks Appears with extra gear at dawn. Lady Belladonna rocks. The one-eyed merchant carries on His back a blank, an empty box, And here, my dear, your card is drawn: A sailor lost at sea.  She tells me this is me. Drowned in the place I ought to be The most alive and free. Each card she flips for me is contradictory Or worse: they're random, cryptic and Impossible to see. The wheel turns.  The world walks In circles in a purple dawn. Lady Belladonna rocks. Right here, my dear.  Your card is drawn. Live, she says, in fear that one day you will die Within the stream that brought y

A reading of lines 31-42 of The Waste Land Translation restating from watching to waiting.  The wind blows fresh for home. Translation substitution from dessert to ocean.  The sea is waste and drear. Translation swapping poison with potion prince to flower boy to girl.  My Irish child where tarriest thou? Translation transition speech to silence sight to blindness darkness to light. Io non mori 'e non rimasi vivo. We translate when we can't identify. We recompose the script to comprehend. We read to see ourselves.  We correlate To see it through, if not to reason why; To do or die, if not to understand. We translate when we can't identify But if we want to live more than to wait Or when we wait to die but find we can't We read to see ourselves. We correlate. We fight against the fight, to make reply To what we do not know.  We contemplate. We translate when we can't identify. We read to see ourselves.  We correlate. (Frisch weht der

Reflections of The Waste Land, lines 19-30 And still those voices are calling from far away... I have no answer in this place. I’m in the irony of space Reinventing Major Tom Every fifty years or so. I want to hide from the sun, Clutch the earth and feel it under me, The dirt from where I come To where I go. I want to run. I want to hide In the shadows of my mind Of a morning stretched before me And an evening closing in. I can’t understand the voice Calling me a child of choice, heir apparent, prince of mortals, Son of man. I want to understand But I don’t know what to say. The sun has been relentless And the garden’s far away. Planet Earth is gray And I haven’t got a clue. I don’t know what to say And I don’t know what to do Show me a hard rock world or a mote in the universe, a resting place or a tombstone to tip; Show me a shelter from the sun or a rock to roll away, well-weathered pavement or a cornerstone. I have no answer in this plac

Coming over the Starnbergersee ... A co ntinuing tribute to The Waste Land, Lines 8-18 And once awake we cannot help but wonder Who we are and what we want to say. We feel the rain before we hear the thunder Whispering a thousand miles away. Our points of origin are torn asunder, Separating us from yesterday. Behind the walls and roofs, within and under Which we live, we don't know what to say. But on the open surfaces are stories, Images for everyone to see The nakedness of all our twisted glories, The disgrace of our identity. We know we ought to stand up and look forward To the tales untold of dreams to be But here we are, ashamed of being mortal, Suffering and wanting to be free.      Now is the discontent of summer,      Trying to read ourselves to sleep, Mourning the loss of where we started from, Starting to hear the distant thunder drum,      Now is the discontent of summer,      Trying to read ourselves to sleep, Unsure we wan

We are such stuff... Whan that Aprill... Winter kept us warm... A poem in honor of the first seven lines of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land When we should sleep, perchance to dream of rest, We wake up in the middle of the dream, And, face to face with all our restlessness, We realize: the more we dream the less We sleep.  Yet in our deepest sleep we seem To seek the sweetest dream: forgetfulness. To let the mountain memories of yes- terday, the pushing pulling of the stream, The ocean of tomorrow's wantonness Be all forgotten: sleep without the stress Of time and place or meaningfulness, dream Beyond the test of schedule or address, Past all interpretations, dream the dream Of peace and find the stream that lets you rest.      The sweetest dreams we don't remember.      In deepest winter we sleep the best. A winter sleep is warm and long and safe inside.  The doors are shut, the blinds are drawn and we are undercover and immortal, but      The s