Mo(u)rning Dove

from Thirty Birds

Zenaida, born of Zeus

Killdeers call with perpetual fear, Nothing but fear, fear, fear, look here, look here! Owls stand guard with the moods of moonlight, Calling who, who, who casts their shadows at night? Each bird sings with a different style, And somehow the mourning dove lost its smile. Nobody knows their trouble and strain: Woe is woe, woe, woe. Pain is pain, pain, pain. Nuthatches ha-ha-ha nervous as clowns Dancing on branches and making their rounds; Gulls have a child-like exuberant noise, A playground of high-pitched girls and boys; A distant hawk telegraphs its fairest warning, And then there’s the dove, quietly mourning. I cannot explain the mourning dove’s pain. Can’t explain pain, pain. Can’t explain pain, pain. Crows are all arrogance, breaking the law, Disturbing the peace with their caw, caw, caw; Jays cop an attitude, ringing their name From the tops of trees, all jay and no shame; Cardinals share their clear cheer cheer But doves keep it personal, muted, austere With hints of a story that nobody knows: No one feels their pain. No one knows their woes. Sparrows are whistling Dixie, with calls Of teakettles, peabodies, bounced rubber balls; Thrushes are pipers that play heaven for us, Ethereally luring us into the forest; Most birds are easy to characterize, But who is to say why the mourning dove cries? I cannot explain the mourning dove’s pain. Can’t explain pain, pain. Can’t explain pain, pain.


from Thirty Birds

Moleskin 4.5

Our second suburban home had been four blocks away from the drainage ditch, and in the summer of twelve we moved even further away, to a place that seemed to be removed from rivers altogether. As before, I don’t remember much about the U-Hauling, maybe because it was mostly Dodge Darting, but oddly I can’t recall anything about the wedding either. We were just suddenly transplanted one suburb south, into a single family home with not much more yard than the townhouse had and with a new person in Dad’s place, someone who also wanted to be called “Dad.” My younger brothers obliged, but I insisted in calling him “Don.” Don was an engineer, and the house was his; he had shared the space with his parents, who were also suddenly transplanted that summer: out with the old, in with the new. Except that Don was old, too, forty four years old, never before married, never had kids. Didn’t have a clue. He was a loving uncle to his sister’s daughter, but that was hardly the same.

Somewhere

The sun is somewhere in a cloudy sky
And I can’t tell the hour, nor east from west, But though the dusk my spirit would deny

My body’s telling me it’s time to rest,
And what has carried me these miles beyond
My starting point, that dawn so far away

The fundamental memories are gone,
Would somewhere in the middle of the day
Turn to its history of winding roads

And heaving hills and shifting winds and rain. But if what breathes can bear the pains and loads What lives will take each step as gift and gain And claim the highways leveled and unbending, And dream the better day of its unending.


Somewhere, past the fog, up in the trees,
A bluebird sings its timeless song to me And to the world of possibilities Of heaven unsophisticatedly Descending on a sunless day, a song So sweet and sad and simple that the air At once intoxicates and makes me strong, Uplifts me and abandons me. Somewhere, I must believe, my destiny awaits, And at the final turn, this history Will end and leave its luggage at the gates: This road, this day, this bird that sings to me, And all these weary words will cease to be And I will fly into eternity.


from Thirty Birds

Following the Path (A Restatement from David Pendlebury’s Garden)

The non-existent have come to serve

at the door of true existence,

nor is it just today that this is so

but since time began

dervishes have come

bereft of wealth and power,

swarming like ants at the door of love.

...No one knows how far it is

from nothingness to God,

but the self will wander right and left

day and night

for years and years

turning around itself like an ox in the mill;

break free from yourself,

free yourself from yourself

and in little time the wandering will cease

and the door will open to you.


from Walled Gardens

Positure

Once, looking back,   my tracks   left in the    snow
Seemed pigeon-toed and    rambling   hereandthere
And   barely   showing where I meant   to go
And   never really   getting   anywhere,
So I resolved to walk a straighter line
      With better posture and a clearer goal,
            And in my mind the tracks I left behind
      Were perfect pictures of a pristine soul,
Until,   unsatisfied,   I turned around
To see   my legacy and   take account,
Which  caused my steps to   weave   from
      edge to edge;
My back   re-bent,   and   I began   to sway;
      And on my cue, a pigeon on a ledge
            Stretched out its sturdy wings
                  and flew  away.

from Thirty Birds

Epigraphs and Epitaphs

T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land (TWL), lines 296-306: 

          “My feet are at Moorgate and my heart
          Under my feet. ...

                    Moorgate is an Underground stop in London’s financial district. 

          ...After the event
          He wept.

                    “He wept” repeats the convalescent’s lament (see TWL 182: “By the waters of
                    Leman I sat down and wept...”) but also recalls Jesus weeping after the event of
                    Lazarus’s death (John 11:35).  See Section 1, “Burial of the Dead,” alluding to
                    The Order for the Burial of the Dead in The Church of England, Book of
                    Common Prayer (1662), which begins with a passage at the heart of the Lazarus
                    event, John 11:26 (KJV, 1611):

                    ...whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die.

                    See also the poem’s epigraph, from Petronius Arbiter, Satyricon, 48 (ca.
                    AD 50, tr. Michael Heseltine 1913):

                    TRIMALCHIO

                    Yes, and I myself with my own eyes saw the Sibyl hanging in a cage; and when
                    the boys cried at her: “Sibyl, Sibyl, what do you want?” “I would that I were dead,”
                    she used to answer.’

                    Eliot had considered an alternative epigraph in Kurtz’s dying words, from
                    Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness 3 (1902):

                    The horror! The horror!

                    The spectrum of DYING WORDS in The Waste Land ranges from the 
                    deathless speech of the Sybil wanting to die to literal dying words of Hamlet
                    and Ophelia (TWL 128 and 172) to the speechless death of the drowned
                    sailor/hyacinth girl (see TWL 38-40 and 47-48).  Rhetorical questions
                    hang in the air (TWL 111-134), souls sigh in limbo (TWL 60-68), a riverbank
                    weeper weeps (TWL 182) and a lovely woman sees death as her only escape
                    (TWL 253, alluding to Oliver Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield 24 (1766)).
                    From Goldsmith:

                    When lovely woman stoops to folly,
                    And finds too late that men betray,
                    What charm can soothe her melancholy,
                    What art can wash her guilt away?

                    The only art her guilt to cover,
                    To hide her shame from every eye,
                    To give repentance to her lover
                    And wring his bosom, is—to die.

                    But there is hope.  

          ...He promised ‘a new start.’

                    See again John 11:26 from the account of Lazarus, and see also Marlow’s
                    comment on Kurtz’s last words in Heart of Darkness 3:

                    Better his cry—much better. It was an affirmation, a moral victory paid for by
                    innumerable defeats ...But it was a victory!

                    Compare Herman Hesse, A Glimpse of Chaos: The Brothers Karamazov, or
                    The Downfall of Europe (1920; tr. Sydney Schiff, 1922):

                    Those who cling definitely to the past, those who venerate time-honoured cultural
                    forms, the Knights of a treasured morality, must seek to delay this Downfall and
                    will mourn it inconsolably when it passes. For them the Downfall is the End; for the
                    others, it is the Beginning. 

                    Eliot met Hesse in Switzerland in 1922 and published this translation of Hesse’s
                    essay in the first issue of his magazine The Criterion (October 1922), the same
                    issue that offered his debut of The Waste Land.  

                    See also Eliot’s later poems, East Coker (1940):

                    In my beginning is my end...

                    ...Trying to learn to use words, and every attempt
                    Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure...

                    ...In my end is my beginning.

                    and Little Gidding (1942):

                    Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
                    Every poem an epitaph.

                    For more on epitaphs, see TWL 404-408 (“The awful daring of a moment's
                    surrender / Which an age of prudence can never retract / By this, and this only, we
                    have existed / Which is not to be found in our obituaries / Or in memories draped by
                    the beneficent spider”), which relates to John Webster, The White Devil (1612)
                    5.6.181-189:

                    FLAMINEO

                    ...they'll remarry
                    Ere the worm pierce your winding-sheet, ere the spider
                    Make a thin curtain for your epitaphs.

                    Eliot would take the East Coker bookends,“In my beginning is my end... In my
                    end is my beginning,” as his own epitaph. 

          I made no comment.  What should I resent?”

          'On Margate Sands.
          I can connect
          Nothing with nothing.

                    Margate is the southern England coastal town along a seaside cliff.  
                    Eliot began a course of RECUPERATION at Margate in the fall of 1921 
                    after suffering from mental exhaustion. He followed this with more formal
                    treatment in Switzerland (see TWL 182).

          The broken fingernails of dirty hands.

                    Compare the nails of the corpse-digging dog at TWL 75.

          My people humble people who expect
          Nothing.'
                              la la

                    Images of BROKENNESS, EMPTINESS AND NOTHINGNESS pervade 
                    this poem. See note, TWL 115 and TWL 22, 40, 119-126, 173,  177, 385, 
                    389, 409, 410, 417 and 427 and here at TWL 300-305. Compare these 
                    lines with the humble thoughts of Kurtz’s “last disciple” in Conrad, Heart of 
                    Darkness 3: 

                    I am a simple man. I have no great thoughts. I want nothing from anybody.

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

Domesticus

A Passing Tribute To Robert Frost:
The bird would cease and be as other birds But that he knows in singing not to sing. The question that he frames in all but words Is what to make of a diminished thing. — Robert Frost
 
I’ve traveled miles and miles to find a bird That’s different than the usual sorts I see To supplement the life list that I keep (To know the lovely dark and deep) And live beyond the world surrounding me. The bird I seek may have a special song Or brilliant feathers or a way about it That separates it from the daily throng (Persisted in the woods so long) And justifies the miles that I’ve devoted. Perhaps the place I go they call a bird Exotic that’s so everyday to me I hardly hear (lost in the sweep Of easy wind) its ordinary cheep; Its ordinary looks I barely see. And in this place, they keep lists of their own And travel miles and miles just to find Within the dreary world from which I came (Having perhaps the better claim) The gardenful of birds I’ve left behind.


from Thirty Birds

The Closet Monster

or Never Fear, by Dog

Most of the time, there is absolutely nothing to worry about. The thing is usually not much more than an inanimate object. Right now, for instance, it seems to be sleeping in a corner of the hall closet, minding its own business, not making a sound. Of course, it is evening now, and the thing has never been known to stir at night, but even in the daytime, as long as the closet door is closed and it keeps to the shadows, it maintains a harmless peace that even a dutiful watchdog might begin to accept.

But don’t be alarmed, my two-legged friends, for you have not only a dutiful dog but a wise one, who knows a deceptive calm when he sees one. I don’t mean to scare you, but there is a beast in our house, a savage monster behind that closet door, with a spine-chilling howl and armor-plated skin and hidden teeth. But rest assured, good people, you shall not be bothered. I am your guard dog, and I am keen to the monster’s ways. If that closet door cracks open even the slightest bit, I’ll perk up my eyes and ears. If the monster wakes, I promise to let you know. And if it dares to emerge from its shadows, never fear, people, I will be on my feet even before the demon lets out its first hair-raising screech. I will not allow it to take over the house. I will scare it back into the closet, so that all of you may stay safe and sound this evening. That is my job, after all, and I intend, as always, to do it right. 

Perhaps some of you aren’t even aware of the monster’s existence. I’m not surprised. The animal rarely comes out when everyone is home, largely due, I’m sure, to my persistent guarding. Right now, for instance, I do not allow it to intrude on you while you’re all eating your dinner, or later when you look at your television, or after that when you’ve fallen asleep. I am doubly alert with the whole family around, and in times like these the monster stays put, probably because it knows better. 

Likewise, the beast seems to have enough sense to keep to the shadows when no one is around —no one, that is, but me. It knows, I believe, that without the restraint that looking out for your safety puts on me, I would tear out its very heart. I swear, by dog, I would have no tolerance. In fact, more than once on those solitary days, I’ve thought of busting the door down and attacking the monster in cold blood, while it sleeps. Even now that is an appealing thought.

But don’t be concerned, people, I am hardly a beast myself. I will control my temper, for your sake, even if just one of you is in the house. 

It is precisely those times, however, that the creature always seems to wait for. It’s as if it knows that I’m not the brutal savage then that I would be in an empty house, nor the alert guard, as I’m trying to be right now, with the house full. I guess it thinks that with just one or two people home, I’m not as much on my toes. And so it has been, I confess. In the winter afternoons, for instance, like the one we had today, the sun looks so inviting as it shines on the living room carpet. And from time to time, I’m sorry to say, I lapse from my basic duties, in favor of that carpet, giving the enemy more opportunity than it deserves. 

Usually only one of you is around. Maybe you’re in the kitchen, playing with dishes, or walking around the house rubbing windows. I glance at the hall closet and see it closed. I peek in the kitchen and see you safe, and —just for a while, mind you —I stretch out and catch my breath, and I relax my guard. Oh, but forgive me, gentle people, for being less than diligent. Forgive me for thinking too much of myself. For it is in just this setting, me stretched out on the floor and you roaming unprotected through the house, that the creature suddenly roars. I jump up and run for the closet, but it is too late. You are no longer in the kitchen, playing with dishes, but in the hallway, gripping tightly at the monster’s neck. Oh, what a sorry dog I am! If only I had been lying against that door to keep, or if only I had not been lying down at all, then you would never have been involved. 

But the sly beast had waited for this opportunity. And what can I do now? As the battle gets under way, you have its neck, and I can only be ready on the side in case you lose your grip. Oh, how I wish that it could be me who has the throat-hold. By dog, I would rip that neck in two.

As it is, though, I can’t do much more than cheer you on. I try to bark louder than the beast, but the beast is deafening, and has incredible endurance. I try to keep the beast at bay, but it is a very clever creature and cunningly expands the battlefield, pulling you slowly from one room to the next. I try to bite the beast, but it is a thick-skinned animal, impervious to my attacks. Only its neck appears to be vulnerable, and that is in your clutches. As you whip it here and there, I can only encourage you to tighten your hold. Of course I suggest, now and then, that maybe you ought to turn its pitiful neck over to me.

But I can see that you’re afraid. You start speaking to me, perhaps asking me how and when you should let go of its neck. But because of the monster’s terrible screaming, I can’t make out exactly what you’re saying, and you don’t seem to hear my reply.

The battle goes on, throughout the entire house. We move into the living room, and the animal spends an extra amount of time right over the area of carpet where I had been sprawled out on moments before. This really steams me, and I start barking even louder. You seem to apply more pressure on your strangle-hold, and yet the monster continues to roar. It could be, I consider, that the neck is thicker than I thought. But I keep barking back at the beast, hoping always that I might at least frighten it back into its shadows. 

We wrestle through every room of the house, and then suddenly, even as my barks are starting to crack, the roaring stops. The animal’s endurance has proven to be less than mine, and I keep on barking, triumphantly, as you drag the silent body back to the closet and firmly close the door.

It is evening, and you are all in the house again. I always notice on nights like this that one of you —the recent warrior, I mean —never wants to say anything about the incident. I understand. You’re still a little shaky, or maybe you don’t want to concern the others. Maybe you know as well as I do that the beast isn’t dead yet. Well, rest assured. The next time I get a chance, I swear, I’m going to bust in and kill that thing for good. In the mean time, never fear, eat your dinner in peace, and enjoy complete safety. Your guard dog is on patrol. My ears are tuned to the closet door, and I will sense the slightest movement in the hallway. I will protect you from the evil monster of the shadows, and you fine people may continue your peaceful meal without any interruption.

But say, I sure would appreciate it if you would put a plate of food aside for me.

English 201, 3/5/90, Prof. Lavin

Moleskin 4.4

Put yourself in my shoes, just for a moment: it is the summer of ‘75, or for the sake of otherness, the summer of twelve. Your father and mother are working hard to raise you, and working together, but something isn’t right. They are living in separate places, looking in different directions; they are often consumed by their own challenges, facing their own futures apart from yours. So it is, with varying degrees of consumption and challenge, for every parent, but this does not occur to you in your youth, and it troubles you even more as parent one starts to talk about moving away to relaunch a career, and as parent two seems to be lonely, in need of a partner. And all of a sudden parent two finds that new partner to finally replace parent one, and in the same sudden, and the order doesn’t matter here, parent one moves two states away, happily accepting a call to a new beginning. And the world seems happy for both of them, but you’re left punching your Christmas present, wondering why.

Walter

Sir Walter Dog was not the knight
we wanted him to be, and yet
he struck a pose on our front steps,
   perusing distant fields.

Nor was he quite the Scottish writer
we would have him answer to,
although I’d bet he had his own
   adventures to reveal.

He was a dog, we’ll give him that,
but nothing of the pedigree
some said he was —more terrier,
   less cocka, mostly poo.

But you’re one for the ages, Walter,
living on in quiet memories
for more than thirty years, and we’re
   still calling out to you.


from Stillwater Symposia

Leo

King Leopold of Vold once ruled
that portion of our Glyndon jungle
where the grass was not quite wild
   and the river didn’t reach.

We kept a chain around his golden
neck for his own good, we said,
but when he grumbled now and then
   we’d let him off the leash.

I want what Leo wanted then,
to have the lion’s share of life,
to run along the jungle’s edge,
   to chase what I desire.

But in a dog’s life, just a taste
of freedom turns into an urge
to hit the roads and try to bite
   the tires off of cars.


from Stillwater Symposia

Walking Song, Revisited (to the tune of Arcade Fire's Modern Man)

I am the man, and this is my dog.
What would I hear if this dog could talk?
What would I want to say if I were the dog?

What would I think? What would I know?
Where would I run to? How far would I go?
And would I run away if I were the dog?

God is the man and I am the dog.
I’m not the man I once thought I was.
He seems so far away, and I don't know what to say,

But I'll stretch this leash from here to heaven,
And I'll sometimes think I know the way
And I'll take the paths that I’ve been given
And I'm learning, I'm learning what to say.

I am the man. This is my dog.
I try to listen when we go walk.
We go walking every day,
And we keep walking, me and my dog.

You may think that you know,
but you'll never understand
the walk of man and dog.

Whether dog, whether man,
you're just doing what you can
on the walk of dog and man.

Prayer is a leash, and this is my prayer,
Drawing me close to the man up there.
He's not so far away,
And I'm working on what to say. 

God is the man, but I am the one
Who walks with him when the day is done,
And with each breaking dawn 
I am the dog,

And I’ll stretch this leash from here to heaven,
And I'll sometimes think I know the way,
But I’ll take the paths that I’ve been given
And I'm learning, I'm learning how to pray.

...but you'll never understand
the walk of man and dog.

Whether dog, whether man,
you're just doing what you can
on the walk of dog and man.

You may think that you know,
but you'll never understand...

Whether dog, whether man,
you're just doing what you can
on the walk of dog and man.

The dog and man...

The dog and man...

The dog and man...

The dog and man...

Songs Beyond The Isle Of Dogs

T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land (TWL), lines 266-295 






          The river sweats

                    Eliot’s note: “The Song of the (three) Thames-daughters begins here. From line
                    292 to 306 inclusive they speak in turn.  V. Götterdammerung, III. I: the 
                    Rhine-daughters.”

                    THE RIVER THAMES is central to this section of the poem, but see also TWL
                    173-184.  For London Bridge, see TWL 62 and 427.  For other river allusions, see 
                    TWL 4 (the Lethe), 25 (Isaiah’s river), 41 (the Congo), 77 (the Cydnus), 172 
                    (Ophelia’s river), 266 (the Rhine), 293 (the Arno) and 396 (the Ganges).

                    Eliot's Thames-daughters follow the nymphs of Edmund Spenser, Prothalamion
                    (1596) (and see also TWL 176, 183 and 184):

                    Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song...

                    There, in a meadow, by the river's side,
                    A flock of nymphs I chanced to espy,
                    All lovely daughters of the flood thereby....

                    The Thames-daughters’ song, however, is more directly derived from that of the
                    Rhinemaidens in Richard Wagner, Götterdammerung (The Twilight of the 
                    Gods, 1876, tr. Frederick Jameson, ca. 1916). The chorus lines "Weialala leia, 
                    Wallala leialala" (TWL 277-278) and the more terse “la la”(TWL 306) are Wagner’s 
                    own, and Eliot also uses gold forging (lines 282-284) and assimilates Wagner’s 
                    clipped pace and spritely tone (TWL 266-289) to contrast the song’s grimmer 
                    content.  In the opera, the nymphs take turns singing one line at a time, with some
                    of the same curse and restoration motifs of the Grail legend.  See Twilight 
                    3.1.81-92: 

                    From the Rhine's pure gold
                    was the ring once wrought.
                    He who craftily shaped it
                    and lost it in shame
                    laid a curse thereon
                    for time to come to doometh
                    its lord surely to death

                    ...if thou the ring wilt not yield
                    to rest for aye in the waters
                    this stream alone stayeth the curse!

          Oil and tar
          The barges drift
          With the turning tide
          Red sails
          Wide
          To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.

                    See Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness, 1 (1902)

                    The sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of an
                    interminable waterway. In the offing the sea and the sky were welded together
                    without a joint, and in the luminous space the tanned sails of the barges drifting
                    up with the tide seemed to stand still in red clusters of canvas sharply peaked, 
                    with gleams of varnished sprits.

          The barges wash
          Drifting logs
          Down Greenwich reach
          Past the Isle of Dogs.

                    Greenwich Reach is a straight section of the Thames south and east of the Isle of 
                    Dogs, at London’s East End just north of Greenwich. The Isle of Dogs, once an 
                    island, is now a peninsula at one of the larger meanders in the Thames River. The 
                    royal dogs of King Henry VIII, and later Queen Elizabeth I, were said to be kenneled 
                    here, although there is no record of the name being used prior to 1588, when it first 
                    appeared on a map. It is, in any case, just across the river from the erstwhile 
                    grounds of the Palace of Placentia, the royal residence where Elizabeth was born
                    in 1533 and where her Privy Council later met.  In 1597, Ben Jonson and Thomas 
                    Nashe wrote a satirical play called The Isle of Dogs, which allegedly offended the 
                    queen and crossed lines of propriety to the point that Jonson and two of his fellow 
                    actors were arrested and all copies of the play were destroyed. The matter was 
                    referred to the Privy Council, which found the actors guilty of “leude and mutynous 
                    behavior” and recommended a three month prison term and a ban on all public 
                    plays for the rest of the summer. Queen Elizabeth was generally a supportive
                    patron of London’s theater scene, but she carried out the Council’s
                    recommendations, effectively imposing a ban usually reserved for the lenten 
                    season.

                    The image of DOGS occurs only one other time in The Waste Land, when the poet
                    bids his friend to keep the dog from digging up a corpse (TWL 74), but there are
                    other seemingly related references within the poem’s principal allusions:  From
                    William Shakespeare, The Tempest, 1.2.376-402 (1611) (see TWL 26, 48, 
                    119-123, 125, 182, 192, 257 and 393) Ariel’s song refers to barking watchdogs;
                    from Ovid, Metamorphoses 3:206-312 (AD 8) (see TWL 77-81 and TWL 
                    197-198) Diana turns Actaeon into a stag to be hunted by his own dogs; from 
                    Jesus ben Sira, Alphabeta (ca.AD 700-900; tr. M. Steinschneider, 1858) (see 
                    TWL 139-161) Lilith is sent to the desert where the wild dogs dwell; and from 
                    Sophocles, Antigone 5: 79-83 (441 BC, tr. Francis Storr, 1912) (see TWL 
                    243-246) Tiresias speaks of

                    mangled warriors who have found a grave
                    I' the maw of wolf or hound

                               Weialala leia
                               Wallala leialala

          Elizabeth and Leicester

                    Eliot's note: "V. Froude, Elizabeth, vol. I, ch. iv, letter of De Quadra to Philip of 
                    Spain..."  See James Anthony Froude, The Reign of Elizabeth (1911): 

                    In the afternoon we were in a barge, watching the games on the river. (The 
                    queen) was alone with Lord Robert and myself on the poop, when they began to 
                    talk nonsense, and went so far that Lord Robert at last said, as I was on the spot 
                    there was no reason why they should not be married if the queen pleased.  

                    In his 1561 letter to King Philip, Spanish Ambassador Alvaro de la Quadra 
                    supported talk that Elizabeth I, known as the Virgin Queen, and Lord Robert
                    Dudley, later the Earl of Leicester, were lovers who would rendezvous at the 
                    Queen’s home in Greenwich, past the Isle of Dogs. A year earlier, Lord Robert’s 
                    first wife, Amy Robsart, had died from a fall down a flight of stairs.  The coroner 
                    officially ruled her death an accident, but rumors persisted that he had arranged for 
                    her death in order to be free to marry the Queen.  In 1564, four years after the 
                    accident the Queen appointed him Earl of Leicester, but she never did marry Lord 
                    Robert or anyone else, and Lord Robert did not remarry for eighteen years. 

          Beating oars

                    The BEATING OARS motif is presented twice in the poem, here and at TWL 420, 
                    but there are also several indirect references, first through the adapted description 
                    of Cleopatra’s chambers (see TWL 77) and then in the allusion to Philomela’s 
                    abduction (see TWL 99).

          The stern was formed
          A gilded shell
          Red and gold

                    Red and gold are the colors of the Spanish flag. In 1588, the Earl of Leicester 
                    ostensibly defended the Thames to keep the Spanish Armada from advancing 
                    towards London. 

          The brisk swell
          Rippled both shores
          Southwest wind
          Carried down stream
          The peal of bells
          White towers
                              Weialala leia
                              Wallala leialala

                    The peal of bells and white towers suggest the festive trappings of a wedding, 
                    forever out of reach for Elizabeth and Leicester; bells also characterize the Tower
                    of London and St Paul’s Cathedral, once white before taking on the dinge of time, 
                    pollution and war.  See also lines 383-384: “...towers tolling reminiscent bells.” See
                    also Walt Whitman, Memories of President Lincoln 6 (1892): 

                    With the tolling tolling bells’ perpetual clang.

          “Trams and dusty trees.
          Highbury bore me.  Richmond and Kew
          Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees
          Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe.”

                    This is the first of the three Thames-daughters' songs. The three singers relate 
                    losses of virginity, each one having a different perspective. 

                    Eliot's note: "Cf. Purgatorio, V. 133: 'Ricorditi di me, che son la Pia; / Siena mi fe', 
                    disfecemi Maremma.'" This refers to Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio 5:118-136 
                    (1321, tr. Henry Wordsworth Longfellow, 1867): 

                    ...Down fell the rain, and to the gullies came
                    Whate'er of it earth tolerated not;

                    And as it mingled with the mighty torrents,
                    Towards the royal river with such speed
                    It headlong rushed, that nothing held it back.

                    My frozen body near unto its outlet
                    The robust Archian found, and into Arno
                    Thrust it, and loosened from my breast the cross

                    I made of me, when agony o'ercame me;
                    It rolled me on the banks and on the bottom,
                    Then with its booty covered and begirt me.

                    ‘Ah, when thou hast returned unto the world,
                    And rested thee from thy long journeying,’
                    After the second followed the third spirit,

                    ‘Do Thou remember me who am the Pia;
                    Siena made me, unmade me Maremma
                    He knoweth it, who had encircled first,

                    Espousing me, my finger with his gem.

                   The speaker is Pia de Tolemei, wife of a thirteenth century Tuscan captain who had
                    her killed to facilitate his marriage to another woman (compare similar allegations 
                    against Lord Robert above). Pia was born to a noble family in Siena; her husband 
                    was the lord of Castel di Pietra in Maremma.  

                    See also William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra 2.2.208 (1623): 

                    ...and what they undid did.

                    In the present passage, Highbury is a working class London suburb; Kew and 
                    Richmond are communities along the River Thames in southwest London, with the 
                    Royal Botanic Gardens, commonly called Kew Gardens, situated between them. 
                    Eliot’s use of this allusion and its tie to London neighborhoods may have been 
                    initially inspired by Ezra Pound, Ode to Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920), an
                    autobiographical London satire with eighteen separate poems, the seventh called 
                    “Siena mi fè, disfecemi Maremma.”  


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