Jan Schreiber ~ Brookline Poet Laureate 2015-17
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  • Shakespeare et al.
    • Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542)
    • Fulke Greville (1554-1628)
    • William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
    • Ben Jonson (1572-1637)
    • John Donne (1572-1631)
    • George Herbert (1593-1633)
  • 20th Century Poems
    • William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
    • Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935)
    • Robert Frost (1874-1963)
    • Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)
    • T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)
    • Louise Bogan (1897-1970)
    • Stevie Smith (1902-1971)
    • W. H. Auden (1907-1973)
    • Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979)
    • Robert Lowell (1917-1977)
    • Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000)
    • Philip Larkin (1922-1985)
    • Robert Creeley (1926-2005)
  • Poems in Translation
    • Bai Juyi (772–846)
    • J. W. von Goethe (1749-1832)
    • Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837)
    • Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898)
    • Paul Valéry (1871-1945)
    • Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)
    • Ho Chi Minh (1890-1969)
    • Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956)
  • Poems by Jan Schreiber
    • Acoustics
    • Now Winter Nights Enlarge
    • A Little Patter
    • The Inventory
    • Cormorants
    • The Road to Nowhere
    • The Birds
  • Contact
Picture
T. S.  E L I O T  (1888-1965)

Lines for an Old Man 


The tiger in the tiger-pit 
Is not more irritable than I. 
The whipping tail is not more still 
Than when I smell the enemy 
Writhing in the essential blood 
Or dangling from the friendly tree. 
When I lay bare the tooth of wit 
The hissing over the arched tongue 
Is more affectionate than hate, 
More bitter than the love of youth, 
And inaccessible by the young. 
Reflected from my golden eye. 
The dullard knows that he is mad. 

Tell me if I am not glad! 

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