Worse ways to go

By Parson Thru

Sat, 21 Apr 2018
  • 694 reads
2 comments
 
On the cusp of sleep, I stare at an imaginary window
 
The shouts of borrachos infiltrate from the street
Thoughts come and go like ships on a horizon
 
I try to follow them
as I always have
 
Phlebas lies beside a bookmark
unquestionably dead
 
I try to resurrect him
but surrender to fatigue
 
It matters not to Phlebas
 
Nor to the poet
whose ashes lie indifferent at East Coker
leaving Phlebas’ bones to wash
in perpetuity amongst the fish
 
What happens when the lantern is extinguished?
 
Dead poets, artists,
the minds that gave us Phlebus
King Lear and Arthur Dent
 
What happens to the universe in which they dwelt?
 
The dry narrative from observers of cerebral activity
gives that all of existence is controlled by a switch
 
On/Off
 
Here today,
etc.
 
That unconsciousness is not the unconscious,
secretive, yet active,
but encapsulates the end of being
 
No linguistic form can represent such oblivion
 
Phlebas the Phoenician,
dead only a two week,
whose bones wash in the current,
moves towards the whirlpool
 
But what lies beyond?
 
Better minds have observed the universe in shutdown
Observed the end of everything
 
Pity Phlebus, then, whose existence persists only in the minds of the living
Pity the minds of the living
 
Pity us
 
T. S. Eliot, “The Waste Land, IV Death by Water”, “Selected Poems”, Faber and Faber Limited, 1954.
Certificate U
Poem
Mortality Games
Miscellaneous

Comments

Submitted by catherine poarch on

I think I might have done The Waste Land at college. Was April the Cruellest month? Anyway, you followed those ships to interesting places and I like how this flits back and forth from your questions to descriptions of Phlebus. I like to think (with no actual evidence to back this up) that in heaven all those imaginary worlds like Narnia, Middle Earth etc will be there for us to visit.

 

Submitted by Parson Thru on

Hi Catherine. It appears it was. Though it seems cheerful enough from this balcony.

We can only hope. Where would we be without hope? There's no future in evidence.

Parson Thru