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  Jul 2016 Diandra Pratama
T. S. Eliot
S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
        A persona che mai tornasse al mondo
        Questa fiamma staria senza più scosse.
        Ma perciocchè giammai di questo fondo
        Non tornò vivo alcun, s’i'odo il vero,
        Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question…
Oh, do not ask, ‘What is it?’
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to ****** and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, ‘Do I dare?’ and, ‘Do I dare?’
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
(They will say: ‘How his hair is growing thin!’)
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
(They will say: ‘But how his arms and legs are thin!’)
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
  So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the ****-ends of my days and ways?
  And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
  And should I then presume?
  And how should I begin?

     . . . . .

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? …

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

     . . . . .

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in
     upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: ‘I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all’—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
  Should say: ‘That is not what I meant at all;
  That is not it, at all.’

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail
     along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
  ‘That is not it at all,
  That is not what I meant, at all.’

     . . . . .

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
Diandra Pratama Jul 2016
When the night falls,
I am at my best.

I could topple from the sky for a saunter amongst the wingless owls arbitrarily.
Carrying my futile attempt on serving the sun with a contempt glance,
As I let my imagination run free like nine jockeys in one horse race.

When the night falls,
I am the captain of my own ship.

I could set my course straight to my hiding place without any further ado;
Where I'd sail to where dreams and phantasies collide until the clock strikes two.

But most importantly,
When the night falls, life isn't like crossing a palisade or walking through a horrible gale;
Life isn't like a perpetual movement of climbing up the rickety stairs or losing a bet to the middleman.

Life isn't as stilted as when I stood dead on the yawnful street or as boisterous as the crowds watching King Louis guillotined to death.

Because there is only peace.

The skies may be the blackest black; the air may be the emptiest space,
but none like the night
where I can sit and stare,
and watch as the moon and the stars
shine my way.
Diandra Pratama Jul 2016
I remember when I saw you on top of the hill; hand in your heart, mouth curved into a crescent-shaped smile.
You looked surprisingly placid for a boy whose mind was like an exploding star.

You couldn't have been more than south of fourteen,
and yet you had the imagination like Verne in revolt;
laughs that akin to an uproar industrial machinery;
and nerves of steel.

And together, you and I were like loose cannons of catastrophic ideas and eclectic dream of travelling around the world in eighty days.

You were my best friend; my confidant,
you were the reason why life was like a waltz to me.

But better yet,
you were my safe haven.

You were my home.
Diandra Pratama Jul 2016
Thin as a lath; eyes of the prairie,
Forsythia the colour of your crowning glory.

Mouth tastes like chalk; touches resemble to an art.
When will I realize, this creature's spell only comes out before dark?

Heed I will, halt I won't.
Your grace deserves an enticing adventure:
a dip into the pool of the lament ocean, a climb to the mountain of forgotten sorrows.

O', my sorcerer-- or are you not?
The final hour has come again.
Until then, a kiss for my chagrin will justify my yearning.
And not one second, I won't miss that tulip smile of yours.

But my sorcerer-- or are you not?
Don't let the night succumbs you to the oblivion,
don't let the cold bites your warmth to bits, don't let the wasp seizes the sweet taste of your honey dew.
For this is neither a goodbye, nor a calling.

This I promise.

— The End —