For POETS UNITED ~ The Living Dead ~ Honoring Our Poetic Ancestors ~ T S Eliot ~ So We Should Have Known'

Inspired by Poets United- Rosemary's tribute to 
A E Housman

Thomas Stearns Eliot OM (26 September 1888 – 4 January 1965) was an essayist, publisher, playwright, literary and social critic and "one of the twentieth century's major poets." Born in St. Louis, Missouri in the United States, he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 (at age 25) and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.
Eliot attracted widespread attention for his poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915), which is seen as a masterpiece of the Modernist movement. It was followed by some of the best-known poems in the English language, including The Waste Land (1922), The Hollow Men (1925), Ash Wednesday (1930) and Four Quartets (1945). He is also known for his seven plays, particularly Murder in the Cathedral (1935). He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948, "for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry."

Some Lines Inspired by 'The Wasteland'

So we should have known

April is the cruellest month or is it ?

bare branches sprouting tiny greens

mixing sorrow of defeat with defiance,

Spring rain drizzles consistently

and snow suddenly surprised us

We stopped in Mohali

went on in half daylight

So we should have known

Emperors of ice creams, not

 long ago when I was a child

crossed barbed wires

carried across borders

frightened, slept in a camp

for two days and two nights

And so I was told and so we knew

wonder how Mother felt 

and held us ? tight' - then on we came

to the pine filled  Northern Hills

and I knew not, was I taking refuge?

was it a shelter? 

or a home in a new land?

So we should have known

What was left in enemy's hand

where are the roots 

 that make a family?

out of masses murdered

who survived or committed suicide?

I cannot say or even guess

For I have seen only images-

heard only broken low voices

which lost half the thought

in trying not to remember

heaps of still breathing bodies

cut or slayed,blood splattered

trains,roads and fields-

Death! Deaths! Dying for a cause

sacrifice yet not supreme-why?

and so we should have known

why we laughed and sang

then why we cried and cry

silently again. in pain-

we suffered in the remains

and the stories continued

told and retold 

as lands were sold

and rivers ran dry

who will care? who cares?

walking shadows, listless hordes

seeking failing drifting falling

Stop ' Look' Beware'

the crown on the statue'

of studded freedom

and we were so innocent

playing games, jumping ropes

reading white and blue and

all that was said in red

and so we should have known

slavery is not dead

which song is stilled

which bird is killed

where is the eagle perched?

how high it flies and has flown

only the discerning eye may see

only the desiring heart may feel

so touch not the forbidden

but seek the Unseen The Hidden

Come under the shadow of the rock

you will find flowers secretly growing

receiving blessed showers

Turn back to the valley

as memories stir, dawn breaks

snowy peaks reveal freedom awaits

in the new Light'

and so we should have known

so we should know...

Providence has more...