The Thursday Poem

Potted Flowers with Books IV
Eric Barjot

from Preludes

1

The winter evening settles down

With smells of steaks in passageways.

Six o'clock.

The burnt-out ends of smoky days.

And now a gusty shower wraps

The grimy scraps

Of withered leaves about your feet

And newspapers from vacant lots;

The showers beat

On broken blinds and chimney-pots,

And at the corner of the street

A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.

Then the lighting of the lamps.

T.S. Eliot

(26th September 1888 - 4th January 1965)