T.S. Eliot (a remembrance)
Before there was a Springsteen T.S. Eliot was The Boss. We tried to understand him till our eyes would not uncross. When T. was young he etherized himself upon a table. He made a slit and saw inside a vast Augean stable. He didn't want to make it nice or dap it with his pen; he blamed it on the human race and sewed it up again. Was T. an antisemite? Yes, for a practical reason too: his bold aesthetic had to have the stink of moneyed Jew. They sent T.S. to poets' hell for felony people-loathing. They took his personal effects and gave him orange clothing. Back here on earth we tiresome squalid creatures of the night, we kikes and micks, humanoid orangutans, we blight on God's green acre, we specimens of his spite, all breathed a sigh of huge relief. So what if he was right? So what if he was right.