Thursday, October 13, 2022

Eliot

Damn you, Thomas Eliot!

Why did you have to be a bigot?


Someday they’ll say, “Who? I forgot!”

At first it seemed a forgivable blot,


A line here and there, not a lot,

A silver string with a nasty knot.


Now it reads like an aneurism, a clot,

A stroke, or babble of a bibulous sot,


Unredeemable, no innocent mot,

But the crisis of your poetry’s plot.


Then you wrote the Four Quartets.

Your hate may be forgiven yet.