New Poetry - Modernist Magazines Project

2. THREE EVILS
When the sky has the ominous
Colours of a bruise, even then
Bother less over the spirits from the sky
Than the spirits from the earth :
They are up under your feet
Before the sun goes, they frequent
The urinals, the henbane heap,
The oil patches of the lorry yard.
Be very careful about them,
Be careful about the invalid,
Stubbly, in slack flannel, who
Reclines on the river balcony.
And I warn you last—she is the
Worst evil—against the Sybil,
The rare Marocaine who foresees
Events in a mirror of tar.
3. FOUR OCCUPATIONS
It is winter and the beggar ties
Brown paper round his stumps
Where he sits by the wall,
And in the studio Blessed Prufrock
Talks of the man from Buffalo, who
Burnt his pants by the fire,
And in the wood the gamekeeper
Who lives alone, fattens
His sow in a hollow tree,
And with Blessed Prufrock the son
Of the psychoanalyst talks about
Cements, and Jefferson, and
Oyster shells and edible mushrooms,
And through the thick pool the lean
Salmon slides to the tide.
GEOFFREY GRIGSON
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