Ed. note: T. S. Eliot was born today 121 years ago. He remains the modernist poet par excellence, reliably moving readers — sometimes to deep thought, sometimes to sly parody. Each period in his career is marked by a consummate example ("Prufrock," "The Waste land," "Four Quartets"). Here is Belle Randall's confrontation with the supreme instance of the master's late style. — DL
“Four Quartets” Revisited
On opening a long unopened book,
what odor rises from the parting pages,
what genie is released, what dark spell broken,
as if some spirit trapped inside for ages,
By this hinge swung open were set free?
My father’s hand has jotted in the margins
its own blunt text of what must be
lecture notes, and planted his place marker
Like a flag among “The Dry Salvages”—
a UC “schedule card,” a blank
grid for weekly classes, and on the back,
O fees and late fees time alone assuages—
We know the longhand’s labored look
was mine, but why that child should scrawl
a phrase so apt for now’s beyond recall:
on opening a long unopened book.
— Belle Randall
Source: Poetry magazine (September 2009).
With thanks to Don Share, who posted Ms. Randall's poem as a comment on a day when we featured Wendy Cope's translation of "The Waste Land" into five limericks.