I Wish You Were Not Gone From This Cold Place

Eliot

I wish you were not gone from this cold place

I should like to have met you face to face

and reclined with you there

in an epiphanal embrace.



You were old when I was born,

old as Prufrock when I was born;

and in the midst of my great depression

you found your wings,

your wings

and your final digression.





Why do we see clearly, all, only one moment before we die?



I hope you watch, amused

from your advantaged position.

Michaelangelo lives,

he lives to this day

In decrepit conditio;



and the women,

the cat-fog,

the gutters cry for you;

they are but useless mimes

sprawled out in a block,

in a block or two



for no one listened to them like you.



I hear your voice in vacant lots,

in alleyways

and sea-waves.

The muses cry themselves to sleep.

I can hear them from the water's edge;

they do not cry for me.



Come and visit us again,

flow through your student's eager pen;

come remind us of our fate;

remind us there is time,

there is always time

to murder and create.



I shall toast my tea to you

when all the world is unetherized and new,

and watch with wondering eyes,

with wonder and surprise,

the wonder of you.