⚝ Intercepted At March 01, 2026
While working on an image, a prospect of tributing T. S. Eliot sprung spontaneously and relayed to a rejuvenated obsession with a poem of his. It's more common for Eliot appreciators to disclose either The Love Song of Alfred Prufrock or The Wasteland as the favourite work; as great as those two are, I have a special rapport with Whispers of Immortality. I remember that for a physics exam in high school, I was wholly unprepared. So I wrote down this poem at the final page of the paper instead... Seven years later, here I am now, trying to make a little recital...
Whispers of Immortality
Thomas Stearns Eliot
Webster was much possessed by death
And saw the skull beneath the skin;
And breastless creatures under ground
Leaned backward with a lipless grin.
Daffodil bulbs instead of balls
Stared from the sockets of the eyes!
He knew that thought clings round dead limbs
Tightening its lusts and luxuries.
Donne, I suppose, was such another
Who found no substitute for sense,
To seize and clutch and penetrate;
Expert beyond experience,
He knew the anguish of the marrow
The ague of the skeleton;
No contact possible to flesh
Allayed the fever of the bone.
. . . . .
Grishkin is nice: her Russian eye
Is underlined for emphasis;
Uncorseted, her friendly bust
Gives promise of pneumatic bliss.
The couched Brazilian jaguar
Compels the scampering marmoset
With subtle effluence of cat;
Grishkin has a maisonnette;
The sleek Brazilian jaguar
Does not in its arboreal gloom
Distil so rank a feline smell
As Grishkin in a drawing-room.
And even the Abstract Entities
Circumambulate her charm;
But our lot crawls between dry ribs
To keep our metaphysics warm.