Poems (Eliot, 1926)/Sweeney Erect

by T. S. Eliot

SWEENEY ERECT

And the trees about me,
Let them be dry and leafless; let the rocks
Groan with continual surges; and behind me,
Make all a desolation. Look, look, wenches!

Paint me a Cavernous mete shore
 Cast in the unstilled Cyclades,
Paint me the bold anfractuous rocks
 Faced by the snarled and yelping seas.

Display me Aeolus above
 Reviewing the insurgent gales
Which tangle Ariadne's hair
 And swell with haste the perjured sails,

Morning stirs the feet and hands
 (Nausicaa and Polypheme),
Gesture of orang-outang
 Rises from the sheets in steam.

This withered root of knots of hair
 Slitted below and gashed with eyes,
This oval O cropped out with teeth:
 The sickle motion from the thighs

Jackknifes upward at the knees
 Then straightens out from heel to hip
Pushing the framework of the bed
 And clawing at the pillow slip.

Sweeney addressed full length to shave
 Broadbottomed, pink from nape to base,
Knows the female temperament
 And wipes the suds around his face.

(The lengthened shadow of a man
 Is history, said Emerson
Who had not seen the silhouette
 Of Sweeney straddled in the sun.)

Tests the razor on his leg
 Waiting until the shriek subsides.
The epileptic on the bed
 Curves backward, clutching at her sides.

The ladies of the corridor
 Find themselves involved, disgraced,
Call witness to their principles
 And deprecate the lack of taste

Observing that hysteria
 Might easily be misunderstood;
Mrs. Turner intimates
 It does the house no sort of good.

But Doris, towelled from the bath,
 Enters padding on broad feet,
Bringing sal volatile
 And a glass of brandy neat.