Waste Land to a Scream: A Gay Science

Novel 002

2. “One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.” Nietzsche

27 July 1914 – On the train to Oxford.

Out the train window, it was green of green to green of green far outside of the City. And yet it was the clock which ticking ticking ticking ruled the rails. So as TS Eliot looked out and saw the rolling hills of the burgeoning flourishing verdant meadow he the ticket to make sure they were on time, with his pocket watch of course, and lilted into thought. He was in a different place on a different continent and staring down at sheets of paper that were whiter than white rather than greener than green. And he was outside a town near a city but not the City. Etching stylishly poetry that did not resemble any poetry he knew except in other languages particularly French. It was from the Lazarus, come from the dead.

And there he was as if he were attended to the Lord of scratching, his job was to sing as the mermaids sang each to each. Hoping that this would quicken the prosody so he could erase and revise the line. Think of it as murder towards creation. He could feel the sweat on his palm, he could enrapture the bare light which covered the wooden table, and yet he continued to expound silently on Michelangelo in the room where the women come and go.

Then he pulled back with a crease in his neck, slapped his hand, and massaged the muscle and tendons. Sitting up he looked around his pitiful room, with only a pot of tea to congeal his rapidly thinning consciousness. Then he looked outside the window and saw buildings on the other side of Massachusetts Avenue, beyond the gate, outside of the college, so close that he felt he could almost touch the wood that was on the other side.

Then in an instant, the blackened urban scene disappeared and he was again in the present. A present that was looming towards a war that seemed to bring chaos and confusion and birthing a black star that would consume them all. Then he looked over and saw another young man reading Kant as if it were the latest novel cramming in all of the panoply has a gourmand on morphine. Disgusting.

And yet and so he needed company. No, he ravenously, unctuously, was famished for company and so he raised his voice by just a little bit.

“Where are you going to?”

What came back was something that he did not expect: an American voice, flat with the curls of New England but broadened with the lyre of California. It was a strange mix.

“I am visiting an old friend at Oxford University, and then I will terry a little while before going back to the United States because I do not think that we shall be involved in this fracas that the Europeans are creating. And you?”

T.S. Eliot straightened himself up and proudly declared: “I am going to Merton College.”

“With your American accent, you will find it a great deal of trouble, because many of the British lads do not like the fact that so many Americans are entering Oxford.” Then after some hesitation, “Oh, and by the way I’m Robert Frost.”

At this point, TS sat up completely erect. “I remember Pound gave your work an excellent sendoff and bought you as a promising young writer.”

“And who are you?” Robert slapped his left hand on his left knee.

“My friends call me TS Eliot. I remember that you went to Harvard and much later on I did as well.” His voice could not hide the elation of meeting another Harvard man, and the collusion that brought the two together.

But on the other end, there was a stillness and a distance. “I’m glad to have met someone who has some connection with Pound, he is a fine editor. And of course, I definitely appreciate his good words for some of the lines that I wrote.” Then Robert was still.

Not one more word was said between the two. The train arrived at Oxford station in a piece of the sound of sense.

The wheels gassed in unison. They moved in opposite directions when leaving the train.