T.S Eliot reads The Wasteland

Just LISTEN TO THIS GUY. I know he's a notorious twat, but T.S Eliot is pretty much my favourite poet ever. Sometimes I listen to this and pretend he's reading to me, as a kindly anti-semitic misogynist grandfather would.



(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

Leda and the Swan by William Butler Yeats

I mark my return to blogging with a disturbing little ditty from Bill Butler Yeats. Recently I've been listening to the Swan Lake soundtrack, because I'm cool like that, and basically realised how amazing it is (thanks, Natalie Portman!).

When you have the two together, the music almost seems to mirror the intensity, horror and excitement that comes across so mightily in the poem. Kudos, Tchaikovsky.



Leda and The Swan

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.

Being so caught up,

So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

William Butler Yeats