Daily Poem

Ok, so here's a long one. Take a deep breath and dive in... A poetic excursion might just do you good (It's about winter, but you don't have to worry about winter, no, not now you don't. Now is the time to read TS Eliot, enjoy him, and shrug off the dark stuff).
 
Preludes

 TS Eliot

I

THE WINTER evening settles down   
With smell of steaks in passageways.   
Six o’clock.   
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.   
And now a gusty shower wraps           
The grimy scraps   
Of withered leaves about your feet   
And newspapers from vacant lots;   
The showers beat   
On broken blinds and chimney-pots,           
And at the corner of the street   
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.   
And then the lighting of the lamps.   

II

The morning comes to consciousness   
Of faint stale smells of beer           
From the sawdust-trampled street   
With all its muddy feet that press   
To early coffee-stands.   
With the other masquerades   
That time resumes,           
One thinks of all the hands   
That are raising dingy shades   
In a thousand furnished rooms.   

III

You tossed a blanket from the bed,   
You lay upon your back, and waited;           
You dozed, and watched the night revealing   
The thousand sordid images   
Of which your soul was constituted;   
They flickered against the ceiling.   
And when all the world came back           
And the light crept up between the shutters   
And you heard the sparrows in the gutters,   
You had such a vision of the street   
As the street hardly understands;   
Sitting along the bed’s edge, where           
You curled the papers from your hair,   
Or clasped the yellow soles of feet   
In the palms of both soiled hands.   

IV

His soul stretched tight across the skies   
That fade behind a city block,           
Or trampled by insistent feet   
At four and five and six o’clock;   
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,   
And evening newspapers, and eyes   
Assured of certain certainties,           
The conscience of a blackened street   
Impatient to assume the world.   

I am moved by fancies that are curled   
Around these images, and cling:   
The notion of some infinitely gentle           
Infinitely suffering thing.   

Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;   
The worlds revolve like ancient women   
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.