Paraphrase (Para-pathy)

I can accept my solitude

but I’d rather be in Minnesota

than here in Chicago,

and I’d rather be there with someone

than to walk these paths of solitude alone.


from March to December

Moleskin 2.9

We perched for four years on the edge of the Buffalo River, and it was a peaceful place for a kid in his Huck Finn days. But the world was getting bigger. The sociopolitical scene of the late sixties and early seventies would dawn on me sometime afterwards; for the moment it was a greater deal to me that my family of four and then five was much bigger than our tributary bounds could hold. We vacationed, locally to an aunt and uncle’s cottage on Pelican Lake, a little farther to our grandparents’ newly built house on Lac La Belle, an extended family fishing vacation —guys only —to Lake of the Woods; and we visited cousins in North Dakota, southern Minnesota, and one summer all the way out to California. In the summer of ‘71 we had eighty people gather on the Buffalo River for a Vold Reunion, and in the summer of ‘72 we traveled to Chicago to see our cousins there. Then, in the fall of that year, the world changed more than I thought it ever would, when Chicago became our home.

Annotations of O Solitude by John Keats (1816)

O Solitude (personified, addressed)! (a weary exclamation) 
if (resignation) I must with thee (Solitude) dwell (linger, live), 
Let it not be (not resigned to the parameters of Solitude: something must change)
among the jumbled heap (the city: the present condition described)
Of murky buildings (conventional structures); 
climb with me the steep, -- (first 8 lines, a chained Italian sonnet: ABBA, ABBA)
Nature (personified)'s observatory (an alternative building) 
-- (emphasis added by break in rhythm, a visual dash) whence the dell (valley), 
Its flowery slopes (alternative to grey walls of steel), 
its river's crystal swell (and glass), 
May seem a span (bridge, another alternative structure); 
let me thy (Solitude’s) vigils (diligent (holy) watches) keep (holding on to the beauty)
'Mongst boughs pavilion'd (another alternative building), 
where the deer's swift leap (what the vigilant one sees)
Startles the wild (abrupt rhythm break; startling within while the vigilant one remains detached) 
bee from the foxglove bell (more break in rhythm: emphasis). 
But (sextant, new thought, moving beyond the beauty beheld) though I'll gladly 
trace (outline, scant sketch of the outer profile) these scenes with thee (Solitude), 
Yet the sweet (what Solitude isn’t) converse (what Solitude doesn’t) 
of an innocent (undefiled) mind (rhythm breaks, emphasizing the new thought), 
Whose words (what Solitude lacks) are images 
of thoughts refin'd (purified) (last 6 lines break from Italian sonnet structure: CDD CDC), 
Is my soul's pleasure; 
and it sure must be (trying to be committal)
Almost (non-committal - he doesn’t know) the highest (sweetest, most innocent, most refined) 
bliss of human-kind (not the 19th century “mankind,” thus suggesting womankind), 
When to thy (Solitude’s) haunts 
two kindred spirits (he longs for companionship) flee.


from March to December

Redefining Solitude

In 1816, John Keats’ first published poem, “O Solitude,” was printed in the London Examiner. As the title implies, Keats spoke in this sonnet to a personification of his own seclusion. He followed with a fourteen-line suggestion to Solitude that it might be willing to allow for a couple of changes.

As I read this, I am led to picture young Keats alone in a “murky” city, not happy with his isolation, and trying to escape it by way of a stream of wishful thinking. His imaginary escape takes two distinct steps: first, to change the environment of his solitude, moving from the city’s dinginess to a more pastoral scene, and then to change his solitude’s parameters, allowing for a companion with whom to enjoy the “haunts.” In fact, then, this is not Keats’ escape from solitude at all, but his palliative reshaping of it. And he puts this wishful stream on paper, addressing Solitude itself, but implying---and, as the poem develops, explicating---that he wants to share his thoughts with another, more real audience.

Solitude does not change for Keats as he writes his wishes down, and there is no other audience for him, but just thinking of the possibilities, the two big steps, seems to raise the young poet’s hopes. Within the poem, he moves from his actual, present situation, one which seems to be lonely indeed, to a possible future of highest bliss. Thus he changes his attitude, not by wishing that he could step out of Solitude’s bounds or that it would disappear, but by optimistically redefining it, to the point that a future of solitude would be something to long for, even a haven to flee to. In two poetic steps he is away from a perspective that depresses him, and considering one that pleases him.

That initial perspective shows in the way that Keats begins: “O Solitude! If I must with thee dwell...” The exclamation sounds of weariness, and the “if I must” breathes resignation. He has pessimistically decided that it is possible, even fateful, that he will always live in some seclusion. Even the word “dwell” connotes a continual, exhaustive lingering, and when Keats goes on to show where he is presently dwelling, the tone is stressed further. He is not just in the city of London, he is “among the jumbled heap / Of murky buildings.” And it will not do for Keats.  “Let it not be,” he pleads to Solitude. 

But Keats does not merely lament his condition here; he turns around and takes his first step in the new direction of optimism. He suggests that he might lead his Solitude to an alternate environment. It is not a fantastic leap: Solitude will still have its enclosures, and its passive, detached ways. But there would be new buildings and better things to see. There would be the improved architecture of “Nature’s observatory:” a valley walled by “flowery slopes,” a pavilion made of trees, a span defined by the dell itself, bridging between its hillsides. And, of course, there would be new sights in the observatory. Keats describes one imagined scene with what might be the most beautiful lines of the poem: “Let me thy vigils keep,” he writes, 

          ...where the deer’s swift leap

          Startles the wild bee from the foxglove bell.

But it still won’t be enough, considers Keats, even as he takes the imaginary step. He would be glad to “trace” such peaceful scenes, but he is still aware of his detachment from them, and his isolation, with Solitude, of looking in from the outside, and not being a part of the action (i.e., he is not doing the “startling”). Keats does not want to cross the line; that would be walking away from Solitude, which hasn’t occurred to him as a possibility. Solitude, as “thee” and “thy haunts,” is referred to with all respect, even to the sonnet’s end. Instead, he wants to take his established companion with him on a second step of wishful thinking.

He imagines, once more, an improved Solitude: this time, one that would allow for a population of two instead of one. He longs for conversation with an additional companion (the first one, Solitude, had not added to the “population”), and as he is explicit about how that conversation would go---sweet, innocent, refined---he implies that these are aspects that had been absent in his Solitude thus far. Innocence and refinement themselves imply a conversation of one voice undefiled by the other, one thought pure from the second, two spirits kindred, but apart; in other words, a conversation different from the one Keats had been holding, and a talk with someone other than himself.

“...It sure must be / Almost the highest bliss,” says Keats about this second revision to Solitude, reminding himself that he still isn’t there, but not yet abandoning all hope. Apparently, he has never been alone with anyone the way he has pictured it, sharing solitude with a kindred soul in a springtime (flowered and river-swelled) valley. He imagines, though, that it would be blissful (maybe just about the highest bliss), and, at any rate, his attitude has certainly improved since he first started dreaming: whereas at first he noted how he “must dwell with his present Solitude, now he appreciates “fleeing” to a future Solitude, just a “climb” and a “leap” away. 

English 240, 4/6/90, Prof. Gardiner


from March to December

Semitemos

Sometimes, we tell our stories backwards:
The burial precedes the funeral, and
mourning anticipates departure.

Semitemos, the plot stands still
while we move on to the denouement:

It will not until Friday be that I begin to wonder
when might have happened on Whatsday.
Lifetimes some is just a foreword

and I want to skip to the afterlife,
but suchtimes the book will make no sense
without the author’s explanation.

So here we are, dear, you not saying a word
and I just filling in the blanks,
but we’re both telling the story as it occurs.


from Turning the Metaphor

From Fresh Wind to Dreary Sea

T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land (TWL), lines 31-42





          Frisch weht der Wind
          Der Heimat zu
          Mein Irisch Kind,
          Wo weilest du?

                    See Richard Wagner, Tristan und Isolde 1.1.5-8 (1865; 
                    tr. Richard le Gallienne 1909):

                    Fresh blows the wind
                    For home:
                    My Irish child,
                    Where tarriest thou?

                    This is a sailor’s song overheard by Princess Isolde, en route to her
                    loveless marriage to King Mark of Cornwall; Isolde wants to drink
                    poison to escape her fate, but her maid substitutes the poison with a
                    love potion. She takes the potion in front of the king’s nephew Tristan,
                    the potion takes its effect and they fall in love. Compare Venus
                    sedating Aeneas to prevent him from falling in love with the widow
                    Dido, at Virgil, Aeneid I.726, alluded to at TWL 92.

                    Tristan was, with Parsifal of the Grail legend, one of King Arthur’s
                    knights. See Jessie L. Weston, The Quest of the Holy Grail (1913),
                    offering this summary of THE GRAIL LEGEND:

                    In Arthurian legend, a Fisher King (the fish being an ancient symbol 
                    of life) has been maimed or killed, and his country has therefore become 
                    a dry Waste Land; he can only be regenerated and his land restored to 
                    fertility by a knight (Parsifal) who perseveres through various ordeals to 
                    the Perilous Chapel and learns the answers to certain ritual questions 
                    about the Grail.

                    Weston concluded in From Ritual to Romance 2 (1920), that

                    the woes of the land are directly dependent upon the sickness, or maiming, 
                    of the King, and in no wise caused by the failure of the Quester.

                    See the Grail allusions at TWL 31-35 (Tristan and Isolde), 201 (Sir
                    Parsifal), 266-306 (The Thames-Daughters), 386-390 (The Perilous
                    Chapel) and 424-426 (The Fisher King). See also Dante, Inferno 5.61-69,
                    where Tristan commiserates with Cleopatra (see TWL77) and the widow
                    Dido (see above), condemned for their lust to the second circle of hell.

          “You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
          “They called me the hyacinth girl.”

                    See Ovid, Metamorphosis 10:256-323: The hyacinth, a perennial April
                    wildflower, was initially a Spartan prince endeared by the sun god Apollo
                    (and also, in other accounts, by the wind god Zephyrus). While playing
                    quoits in the sun the prince was killed by a wind-blown quoit; Apollo
                    raised a purple flower out of his blood, traced a mournful “ai, ai” on its
                    petals and named it Hyacinth.

           —Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
          Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
          Speak, and my eyes failed, ...

                    See Eliot’s note at TWL 126, tying the hyacinth girl to the drowned
                    sailor with pearly eyes. This as the speaker’s own eyes are failing.

                    AMBIGUOUS IDENTITIES recur throughout this poem; see TWL
                    12, 46-48, 54, 126, 207-08, 218-19, 312-18 and 320.

          ...I was neither
          Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,

                    See Dante, Inferno 34:25:

                    I did not die, and I alive remained not.

                    See also Vyasa, Bhagavat Gita 2:11 (ca. 100 BC, tr. Kâshinâth 
                    Trimbak Telang, 1882):

                    Learned men grieve not for the living nor the dead.

                    Compare TWL 117-126 (those who know nothing) and 182 (one who grieves).

          Looking into the heart of light, the silence.

                    See Conrad, Heart of Darkness 3: While waiting for the tide to rise on the
                    Thames, Marlow, “the only man of us who still followed the sea,” told
                    his shipmates of a past journey up the Congo,

                    into the heart of darkness. It was very quiet there.

                    Compare this with Dante, Divine Comedy: Paradiso 12:30-31:

                    Out of the heart of one of the new lights
                    There came a voice...

          Oed’ und leer das Meer.

                    See Wagner, Tristan und Isolde 3.1.24:

                    The sea is waste and drear.

                    This is the report to Tristan’s henchman Kurwenal, who was keeping vigil
                    over his ailing master and had asked a shepherd to “Watch thou the sea” for
                    Isolde’s ship to arrive.

                    One of the more personal influences on this poem was the 1915 death of Eliot’s
                    friend JEAN VERDENAL. See John Peter, A New Interpretation of The 
                    Waste Land (1952) and James E. Miller, T.S. Eliot's Personal Waste 
                    Land: Exorcism of the Demons (1977). Eliot met Verdenal in Paris in 1910,
                    and they kept a long-distance friendship while Eliot was studying at Harvard in
                    1911 and 1912. See Valerie Eliot, Letters of T.S. Eliot: 1898-1922 (1988).
                    In one letter to Eliot, Verdenal had expressed a deep admiration for Wagner’s
                    Tristan und Isolde, which now bookends the hyacinth girl / drowned sailor
                    story. In April 1915 (the cruelest month; see TWL 1), Verdenal was among
                    troops sent to Gallipoli (see Mrs. Porter’s soldiers at TWL 199; see also the
                    Stetson friend, TWL 69), where he was officially commended for helping to
                    evacuate wounded soldiers:

                    Scarcely recovered from pleurisy, he did not hesitate
                    to spend much of the night in the water up to his waist.

                    He died two days later. That year Eliot wrote The Love Song of J. Alfred 
                    Prufrock (1915), and he dedicated his first collection, Prufrock and Other 
                    Observations (1917) to Verdenal. In 1934, Eliot wrote in T.S. Eliot, A 
                    Commentary, Criterion (April 1934):

                    I am willing to admit that my own retrospect is touched by a sentimental 
                    sunset, the memory of a friend coming across the Luxembourg Gardens in 
                    the late afternoon, waving a branch of lilac, a friend who was later (so far 
                    as I could find out) to be mixed with the mud of Gallipoli. 

                    See TWL 1-11. For other DROWNING references, see TWL 55, and
                    compare Ophelia’s death in Shakespeare, Hamlet 4.7.164-181 (see TWL
                    172-174) with the hyacinth girl’s demise at TWL 38 (“Your arms full, and
                    your hair wet”) and the shallow water death of Bavarian King Ludwig II
                    (alluded to at TWL 8). See also the collected currants in the merchant’s
                    pocket (see TWL 210) and the water deaths of the Tempest sailor (TWL
                    48), and, in the section entitled “Death by Water,” Phlebas the Phoenician
                    (TWL 312-321). Finally, note the simile of Cleopatra’s perfumes that
                    “drowned the sense in odours” (TWL 89).

                 
from T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, with annotations (and other explanations)

Wind and Fire

I have no argument

for you, my friend;

no matter how the fires of

conviction burn within,

I shall remain

conspicuously calm,

let others recommend the course

of conversation,

let them render

judgment on us all:

no less convicted,

they of the open air,

until the flicker of their flame

surrenders to the wind.

For you, my friend,

I have no argument

but the wind itself:

may it ever fuel your dance

and feed your soul

and start your turbines turning;

and that inner fire,

may it be your self content:

even as the wind begins

to rage against you,

may you ever keep your spirits
trimmed and burning.

from Walled Gardens

Ecumenical Mantra, Part 1

Sew no purse,

Tear no veil,

Lick no plate,

Buy no flattery.

See no colors, make no claims.

Look past form, shape and shade,

Everything defined in terms

Of evil, good, black and white,

But let the air be hot and wet,

Let the earth feel cold and dry.

Let there be no contradiction.

Fire is hot and water wet,

Everything defined;

Fire dry and water cold

For all Eternity, and yet

Without the quintessential word

Laying down Eternity

Everything is argument

And all things contradict.


from Walled Gardens

Moleskin 2.8

Almost as close, just across a soybean field, were the Ericksens, then the Andersons, young families with kids my age who played as I played, moms who kept house and dads with distant jobs. By sheer time spent, I remember the first set of kids —Dean, Wayne and their older sister Loreen —more than the second —was it Lonny and two others? —and yet it was an episode with the Andersons that sticks with me most, or rather a talking to I had with my parents afterwards, at the end of a domino row. The first tile fell when I had asked my parents about sex one day, and they answered. I don’t recall the phrasing, but I’m pretty sure they never repeated it.  But I did, the next day, to the Anderson kids, and they did to their parents at dinner time, and then their parents called mine, and then the last domino fell, somewhat sternly —“Jon, they were quite upset” —but tolerably —“we’re not mad at you.” Thus my first education about sex, with all its social ramifications, and an eye opener, by the way, on different styles of parenting.

The Task Of Truth

We are books & blogs on shelves & screens
Collecting dust, the timeless mask,
And who will have tomorrow’s task
Of reading remnants of ourselves
In search of truth and what it means
Beneath the leaves, behind the scenes?

Between the lines, before each word
Was written true, reality
Turned into shards of history,
And who should have the thankless chore
Of faithful repetition, word
For word, unspun, unchecked, unstirred?

Our government’s gone partisan.
The fourth estate’s gone commentary.
Truth has left the sanctuary.
Cyberspace is shopping carts
& garbage cans.  The classroom’s gone
To Googling itself.  Log on,

And look beyond this timeless mask
Of our neglect, beneath the dust
Of idle grayness over us,
Past existential grime: our time
In history remains, the task
Of truth prevails.
    But who will ask?


from Calendrums

Beehive Truth

It is better, in this beehive,

to be tailored in the truth of humility

than underdressed in the lies of violence.

This is no place to be naked and raving.

Leave your lie of strength at the door

and put on the armor of lowliness.

God will recognize your allegiance,

and you will trample the heights of heaven

beneath your feet.

based on El Hadiqa by Haqim Sanai, ca. 1100 AD; here is a direct translation by Major J. Stephenson, 1911 : "Lowliness befits thee, violence suits thee not; a naked man frantic in a bee-house is out of place. Leave aside thy strength, betake thyself to lowliness, that so thou mayest trample the heights of heaven beneath thy feet; for God knows that, rightly seen, thy strength is a lie, and thy lowliness truth."


from Walled Gardens

Earthworm Theology

God knows what depths and shallows

each soul can navigate,

the draught of every creature. God creates...

– Sanai, tr. Coleman Barks

...and through this sacred rhythm

I come to appreciate

that everything is sacred. God creates

and bestows each godly wisdom

within. There is no mind.

Another knowing lives outside of time,

beyond the basic neurons

that spark our mortal fire,

above the carnal pulse of our desire;

nor can I have desire

of such capacity

to wish for all that God has given me.

Before this altar silence

becomes my eloquence

and emptiness my path to sustenance,

and I will find tomorrow

connected to today,

and I will learn to celebrate the way

that God has set before me,

this day, my daily earth,

the life I live, the wisdom I am worth.


from Walled Gardens

Come In Under The Shadow

T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land (TWL), lines 19-30





          What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
          Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,

                  Eliot’s note: Compare Ezekiel 2:1:

                  And [the LORD] said unto me, Son of man, stand upon thy feet, 
                  and I will speak unto thee.

                  See also TWL 186, alluding to Ezekiel 37:3:

                  Son of man, can these bones live? 

          You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
          A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,

                  See Ezekiel 6:4:

                  And ...your images shall be broken.

                  For brokenness, see note at TWL 303. See also Job 8:13,17 (likening the 
                  hypocrite who forgets God to a plant without earth and water): 

                  His roots are wrapped about the heap, and seeth the place of stones.  

                  ROOTS appear at TWL 4, 7 and 19; see also the notes at TWL 12, 71 and 324.

          And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,

                  Eliot’s note: Compare Ecclesiastes 12:5.  See also TWL 13, alluding to Ecclesiastes 
                  12:1 and 5 and the transition from youthfulness to dying days:

                  Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, 
                  nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them; ...when 
                  they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond 
                  tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because 
                  man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets.

          And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
          There is shadow under this red rock,

                   See Isaiah 32:2:

                  And a man shall be as an hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; 
                  as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.  

          (Come in under the shadow of this red rock),

                   See William Shakespeare, The Tempest 1.2.376 (1611): 

                  ARIEL

                  Come unto these yellow sands...

                  Ariel’s song is repeatedly alluded to here. See William Shakespeare, 
                  The Tempest 1.2.376-405, and note these references to Ariel's song 
                  throughout the poem: 

                  Enter Ferdinand [,] and ARIEL, invisible, playing and singing.

                  ARIEL [Sings].

                   Come unto these yellow sands, (see TWL 26)
                   And then take hands:
                   Curtsied when you have and kissed
                   The wild waves whist,
                   Foot it featly here and there,
                   And sweet sprites bear
                   The burden.

                   (burden dispersedly)
                  SPIRITS

                   Hark, hark! Bow-wow,
                   The watch-dogs bark, bow-wow. (see TWL 276)

                  ARIEL

                   Hark, hark! I hear
                   The strain of strutting chanticleer
                   Cry, Cock a diddle dow. (see TWL 393)

                  FERDINAND

                  Where should this music be? i' the air or the earth? (see TWL 119) 
                  It sounds no more, and sure, it waits upon
                  Some god o' the island. Sitting on a bank,
                  Weeping again the king my father's wreck, (see TWL 182, 192) 
                  This music crept by me upon the waters, (see TWL 257) 
                  Allaying both their fury and my passion
                  With its sweet air. Thence I have followed it
                  (Or it hath drawn me rather) but 'tis gone.
                  No, it begins again.

                  ARIEL [Sings]

                   Full fathom five thy father lies, (see note at TWL 166) 
                   Of his bones are coral made; (see TWL 186) 
                   Those are pearls that were his eyes, (see TWL 48 and 125) 
                   Nothing of him that doth fade
                   But doth suffer a sea-change
                   Into something rich and strange.
                   Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell

                  SPIRITS

                   Ding-dong

                  ARIEL

                   Hark! now I hear them.

                  SPIRITS

                   Ding-dong, bell.

                   See also Virgil, Aeneid 5.89, where Aeneas, having sailed through a 
                   tempest, lands on the yellow sands of hospitable Sicilian shores.

                  Shakespeare’s Ariel, a spirit “which art but air” (5.1.21), causes a passing ship
                  to run aground, then brings all its passengers safely to shore. In Thomas
                  Heywood, Hierarchy of the Blessed Angels 4 (1635), another Ariel 
                  converges the elements of earth, water and air as “earth’s great Lord” and 
                  one of the princes who rule the waters. See also Heirarchy 1, echoing lines 
                  from Augustine’s Confessions later alluded to at TWL 307:

                  I sought Thee round about, O Thou my God, 
                  To finde thy aboad. 
                  I said unto the Earth ‘Speake, art thou He?’
                  She answer'd me,
                  ‘I am not.’ 

                  ...I askt the Seas, and all the Deepes below,
                  My God to know.

                  ...I askt the Aire, if that were hee? but know
                  It told me, No.

                  ...I askt the Heavens, Sun, Moone and Stars; but they
                  Said ‘We obey.

                  ...We are not God, but we by Him were made.’

          And I will show you something different from either

                  See Jeremiah 33: 2-3, 10, 11:

                  Thus saith the LORD the maker thereof, the LORD that formed it, to 
                  establish it; ...Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee 
                  great and mighty things, which thou knowest not. ...Again there shall 
                  be heard in this place, ...even in the cities of Judah, and in the streets 
                  of Jerusalem, that are desolate, without man, and without inhabitant, 
                  and without beast, The voice of joy, and the voice of gladness ...For 
                  I will cause to return the captivity of the land, as at the first...

          Your shadow at morning striding behind you
          Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;

                   See T.S. Eliot, The Death of Narcissus (1915): 

                  Come in under the shadow of this gray rock,
                  And I will show you something different from either
                  Your shadow sprawling over the sand at daybreak, or
                  Your shadow leaping behind the fire against the red rock...


                  See also Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, Philaster 3.2 (1620):

                  Preach to birds and beasts
                  What woman is, and help to save them from you;
                  How heaven is in your eyes, but in your hearts
                  More hell than hell has; how your tongues, like scorpions,
                  Both heal and poison; how your thoughts are woven
                  With thousand changes in one subtle web,
                  And worn so by you;
                  ...How all the good you have is but a shadow,
                  I' the morning with you, and at night behind you
                  Past and forgotten.

          I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

                  See John Donne, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions: 4. The Physician 
                  Is Sent For (1638): 

                  What’s become of man’s great extent and proportion, when himself shrinks himself 
                  and consumes himself to a handful of dust; what’s become of his soaring thoughts, 
                  his compassing thoughts, when himself brings himself to the ignorance, to the 
                  thoughtlessness, of the grave?

                  GRAVES AND BURIAL SCENES recur at TWL 71-75, 193, 246 and 388; 
                  see also the allusions of the epigraph and TWL 2, 7, 71, 74, 186, 214, 246, 
                  276, 296 and 378.


from T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, with annotations (and other explanations)