Four Preludes
by T. S. Eliot


I                                                 II                                                 III                                                 IV                                                

The winter evening settles down                   The morning comes to consciousness                 You tossed a blanket from the bed,                  His soul stretched tight across the skies
With smell of steaks in passageways.              Of faint stale smells of beer                      You lay upon your back, and waited;                 That fade behind a city block,
Six o’clock.                                      From the sawdust-trampled street                   You dozed, and watched the night revealing          Or trampled by insistent feet
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.                 With all its muddy feet that press                 The thousand sordid images                          At four and five and six o’clock;
And now a gusty shower wraps                      To early coffee-stands.                            Of which your soul was constituted;                 And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
The grimy scraps                                  With the other masquerades                         They flickered against the ceiling.                 And evening newspapers and eyes
Of withered leaves about your feet                That time resumes,                                 And when all the world came back                    Assured of certain certainties
And newspapers from vacant lots;                  One thinks of all the hands                        And the light crept up between the shutters         The conscience of a blackened street
The showers beat                                  That are raising dingy shades                      And you heard the sparrows in the gutters,          Impatient to assume the world.
On broken blinds and chimney-pots,                In a thousand furnished rooms.                     You had such a vision of the street                        
And at the corner of the street                                                                      As the street hardly understands;                   I am moved by fancies that are curled
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps                                                                 Sitting along the bed's edge, where                 Around these images, and cling:
                                                                                                     You curled the papers from your hair                The notion of some infinitely gentle
And then the lighting of the lamps                                                                   Or clasped the yellow soles of feet                 Infinitely suffering thing.
                                                                                                     In the palms of both soiled hands                                                
                                                                                                                                                         Wipe your hands across your mouth, and laugh;
                                                                                                                                                         The worlds revolve like ancient women
                                                                                                                                                         Gathering fuel in vacant lots.