Every Thought...
Week 32: Walking Song
I have etched this Walking Song into memory, perhaps more than any other of my poems, at first while out simply walking the dog, and eventually while driving, working, waiting in line...
08/05:
TWL, Lines 266-295: Songs Beyond The Isle Of Dogs
266 The river sweats
267 Oil and tar
268 The barges drift
269 With the turning tide
270 Red sails
271 Wide
272 To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.
273 The barges wash
274 Drifting logs
275 Down Greenwich reach
276 Past the Isle of Dogs.
277
Weialala leia
278
Wallala leialala
279 Elizabeth and Leicester
280
Beating oars
281 The stern was formed
282 A gilded shell
283 Red and gold
284 The brisk swell
285 Rippled both shores
286 Southwest wind
287 Carried down stream
288 The peal of bells
289 White towers
290
Weialala leia
291
Wallala leialala
292 ‘Trams and dusty trees.
293 Highbury bore me. Richmond and Kew
294 Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees
295 Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe.’
266. THE RIVER THAMES is central to this section of the poem, but see also lines 173-184 and note 209. For London Bridge, see lines 62 and 427. For other river allusions, see lines 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) and note 430 (the Acheron).
THE THAMES-DAUGHTERS’ SONG: Eliot: “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.”
See Richard Wagner, Götterdammerung (note 8). The Thames-daughters’ song is directly derived from that of Wagner’s Rhine-daughters. The chorus lines "Weialala leia, Wallala leialala" (lines 277-278) and the more terse “la la”(line 306) are Wagner’s own, and Eliot also uses gold forging (lines 282-284) and assimilates Wagner’s clipped pace and spritely tone (lines 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 (note 0.2). See Götterdammerung 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!”
NYMPHS, or singing spirits, hearken back to the airy spirits of Ariels’ song in the Tempest (see note 26). Eliot's Thames-daughters also follow the nymphs of Edmund Spenser, Prothalamion (see note 176):
“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....”
See also lines 176, 183 and 184. For the meaning of what Eliot’s nymphs sing, see note 293.
272. BARGES DRIFTING: See Conrad, Heart of Darkness 1:
“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.”
276. THE ISLE OF DOGS, once an island, is now a peninsula at one of the larger meanders in the Thames River, just north and west of Greenwich Reach, a straight section of the Thames. 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.
For commentary within a year of this event, see Francis Meres, Palladis Tamia (1598):
"As Actæon was worried of his owne hounds: so is Tom Nash of his Isle of Dogs. Dogges were the death of Euripedes; but bee not disconsolate, gallant young Iuuenall, Linus, the sonne of Apollo died the same death. Yet God forbid that so braue a witte should so basely perish! Thine are but paper doggies, neither is thy banishment like Ouids, eternally to conuerse with the barbarous Getæ. Therefore comfort thyselfe sweete Tom, with Cicero's glorious return to Rome, and with the counsel Æneas gives to his seabeaten soldiers.”
Palladis Tamia, subtitled Wit’s Treasury, was used in the 1600's as a schoolbook covering English literature from Chaucer to Shakespeare. Pallas, or Athena, was the goddess of wisdom, or wit (see Pallas Bathing, note 298), and Tamia means household attendant or, in this case, treasurer. The cited Pallas Tarnia passage refers to Actaeon’s death by his own dogs (see note 197), Euripides’s death by dogs (see note 198) and the death of Apollo’s son Linus by sheepdogs (see Pausanius, Description of Greece (ca. 180 ACE)). It also refers to the exiles of Juvenal, a second century Roman satirist; of Ovid, who was banished to Getae for “a poem and a mistake” (See Ovid, Tristia, ca. 8 ACE); and of Cicero, who returned to a cheering senate after a yearlong political exile in 58 BCE. Finally it refers to Aeneas’s morale-boosting speech to his troops at Virgil, Aeneid (note 0.1) 1:198-207.
DOGS appear only one other time in The Waste Land, when the poet bids his friend to keep the dog from digging up a corpse (line 74), but there are other seemingly related references within the poem’s principal allusions: besides the attacks by dogs of Actaeon and Euripides, noted above, barking watchdogs appear in Ariel’s song (see Shakespeare, The Tempest, at note 26), and Lilith is sent to the desert where the wild dogs dwell (see Jesus ben Sira, Alphabeta, at note 145). See also Penteus’s gruesome demise by the Maenads in Euripides, The Bacchae (note 248). Finally, see Sophocles, Antigone 5: 79-83 (note 248), in which Tiresias speaks of:
“...mangled warriors who have found a grave
I' the maw of wolf or hound.”
279. ELIZABETH AND LEICESTER refers to Queen Elizabeth I, the so-called Virgin Queen, and her alleged long time lover, Lord Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester.
Eliot: “V. Froude, Elizabeth, vol. I, ch. iv, letter of De Quadra to Philip of Spain...” See James Anthony Froude, The Reign of Elizabeth (1911) 1.4:
“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 this 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 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.
Elizabeth ruled by the precepts of “semper eadem” (“always the same”) and "video et taceo" ("I see, and say nothing"). Compare these to the comfortable forgetfulness of winter before the season’s change (line 6), and the dismissive inability to see of Madame Sosostris (line 54). For more on perceptiveness and the lack thereof, see notes 219 and 308.
280. BEATING OARS are mentioned twice in the poem, here and at line 420, but there are also several indirect references, first through the adapted description of Cleopatra’s chambers (see note 77) and then in the allusion to Philomela’s abduction (see note 99).
283. 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.
291. THE PEAL OF BELLS from white towers suggest the festive trappings of a wedding, forever out of reach for Elizabeth and Leicester; bells would ring in the Tower of London and St. Paul’s Cathedral, which were once white before taking on the dinge of time, pollution and war. See also line 68 for St. Mary Woolnoth’s bells with a “dead sound at the final stroke of nine” and lines 383-384: “...towers tolling reminiscent bells.” See also Whitman, Memories 6:
“With the tolling tolling bells’ perpetual clang.”
Compare the bells ringing in Ariel’s song (note 26), at Shakespeare, The Tempest 1.2.405.
295. THE PIA’S LAMENT: To make sense of what was carried downstream (see line 287), we are brought upstream to suburbs southwest of the City, where the dinge on the white towers is now reflected by “trams and dusty trees.” First, Highbury is a working class London suburb, north of the river, presented here as an earlier point of origin; nothing more is said about Highbury, although Eliot had considered several digressive lines to further describe a somewhat pastoral, though still dusty, suburban scene. The action, however, is at Kew and Richmond, 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 multi-suburban allusion may have been initially inspired by Ezra Pound; see Pound, Ode to Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920), an autobiographical London satire with eighteen short poems, the seventh called “Siena mi fè, disfecemi Maremma.” As recognized by Eliot, this is a quote from “la Pia” in Dante’s Purgatorio, telling her life and death story in a few brief lines. Eliot:
“Cf. Purgatorio, V. 133:
'Ricorditi di me, che son la Pia;
Siena mi fe', disfecemi Maremma.'”
See Dante, Purgatorio 5:133-134:
“Do Thou remember me who am the Pia;
Siena made me, unmade me Maremma”
Pia de Tolemei, born to a noble family in Siena, was the gentle wife of a thirteenth century Tuscan captain, the lord of Castel di Pietra in Maremma. She met her end when her husband, heart set on his next marriage, threw her from a castle window. Compare this to the alleged murder of Amy Robsart (see note 279).
The Pia’s displacement is similar to that of the Russian/German/ Lithuanian of line 12, or Aeneas from Troy to Carthage, or Queen Dido from Tyre to Carthage (see notes 12 and 92); her making and unmaking also reflects the doing and undoing of Queen Dido by Cupid and Aeneas, as described in Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra 2.2.208 (see note 80):
“...and what they undid did.”
The reflection is backwards, however: Queen Dido fell for Aeneas when Cupid intervened, but they never married and her love drove her to suicide when Aeneas left, while the Pia had been married until her husband murdered her. The Pia’s lament continues at Purgatorio 5:135-136:
“‘He knoweth it, who had encircled first,
Espousing me, my finger with his gem.’”
THE RICHMOND NYMPH: This is the first of three parts to the Thames-daughters' song (see note 266). Three nymphic singers each relate a loss of innocence from a different perspective. See notes 297, 298 and 303. But more than just innocence is lost: in this first song, similar to the next two, there is a vulgar sexual act that marks an end of virginity, or at least of any sense of romance: in this first song the victim’s knees are raised, she is flat on her back on the bottom of a boat and she is undone. At the same time, although the Pia ostensibly did nothing wrong, there is a lingering sense of shame and guilt in Eliot’s retelling. Dante encountered the Pia in the second spur of ante-purgatorio, where those who died a violent death had repented of their sins just before dying. Without such timely repentance the victim might have been found elsewhere in Dante’s journey.
08/06:
Leopold
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.
08/07:
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 memories
for more than thirty years, and we’re
still calling out to you.
08/08:
Duncan And 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.
08/09:
Bruiser: By Way Of An Introduction
This is my walking song.
Everyone should have a walking song,
to break the silence,
to add to the routine,
to keep life's conversation going.
A walking song helps one appreciate
the world along the pathway,
and the companions of the day.
It's a talk to go with the walk,
a song to sing when no one else is there.
Best of all, a walking song is a daily discipline,
putting to practice the challenge of Paul
from 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18:
Rejoice always,
pray without ceasing,
give thanks in all circumstances...
Which leads to verse 19: "Do not quench the spirit."
08/10:
Yoshi: My Walking Song
I
Lately my life revolves around a dog
Who knows whose leash it is and whose routine
We follow, stretching thin the line between
Our independent wills.
I see the dog
As one who needs a master, while the dog
Sees one who needs a friend, and if I’ve been
One caught up on commands the dog has seen
Me listening now and then.
So man and dog
Since time began have tugged upon this leash
And traveled down the trails of this routine
Each morning looking forward to the walk.
Man and dog,
Unequally assigned, but side by side
Man walks the dog, dog walks the man, and each
One seems to keep the other satisfied.
I am the man. This is my dog
What would I hear if my 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?
Let me stretch this leash from here to heaven,
Let me sometimes think I know the way
But let me take the paths that I’ve been given
And learn what I should say.
I am the man. This is my dog.
I try to listen whenever we walk.
But what can there be to say
when you’re a dog?
II
Sometimes I find myself spinning around
And chasing after things that aren’t there,
Entangling the one whose leash I share
And losing sight of where we might be bound.
I think it’s good to have someone around
To take my side, to set the pace, to bear
The distance and to gently lead me where
I know I need to go,
But I have found
Myself spinning around things I don’t know.
I’m leaping after birds up in the air
And tracking common scents into the ground,
But I have found
The one whose leash I share at every turn
Keeps telling me the things I ought to know
But giving me the time I need to learn.
God is the man. I am the dog.
I’m not the man I once thought I was.
He seems so far away.
I am the dog.
Prayer is the leash. This is my prayer,
Drawing me close to the man up there.
I don’t have words to say.
I am the dog.
But I’ll stretch this leash from here to heaven,
And sometimes I’ll think I know the way,
But I’ll take the paths that I’ve been given
And learn what I should 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.
III
Lately my mind has turned the metaphor
Of man and dog, the leash and the routine
Upon its head. What can these verses mean
If I’m still learning what the walking’s for?
And can there even be a metaphor
Sufficient for the poetry I’ve seen
Along the way, when every step has been
Part of a song I’ve never sung before?
All the more,
I will walk, and in my walking sing,
And with my singing cherish the routine
And through routine embrace each metaphor
All the more,
Of God and man, of learning how to pray,
Of never understanding everything
About this life but walking anyway.
And I’ll stretch this leash from here to heaven,
And sometimes I’ll think I know the way,
But I’ll take the paths that I’ve been given.
I’m learning how to pray.
Prayer is the leash. This is my prayer,
Keeping me close to the man up there,
And he’s not so far away.
I am the dog.
08/11:
Moleskin 4.4: The Summer Of Twelve
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.
