Conversation Galante

By Thomas Stearns Eliot

1888.9.26-1965.1.4

I observe: "Our sentimental friend the moon!
Or possibly (fantastic, I confess)
It may be Prester John's balloon
Or an old battered lantern hung aloft
To light poor travellers to their distress."
She then: "How you digress!"

And I then: "Some one frames upon the keys
That exquisite nocturne, with which we explain
The night and moonshine; music which we seize
To body forth our vacuity."
She then: "Does this refer to me?"
"Oh no, it is I who am inane."

"You, madam, are the eternal humorist,
The eternal enemy of the absolute,
Giving our vagrant moods the slightest twist!
With your aid indifferent and imperious
At a stroke our mad poetics to confute--"
And--"Are we then so serious?"

DayPoems Poem No. 2677
<a href="http://www.daypoems.net/poems/2677.html">Conversation Galante by Thomas Stearns Eliot</a>

The DayPoems Poetry Collection, www.daypoems.net
Timothy Bovee, editor

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