Sunday Poetry V -- A PRELUDE from T.S. Eliot

-- for those with a smaller appetite for poetry --

(I've always associated this poem with Christmastime.)

*

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 empty blinds and chimney-pots,

And at the corner of the street

A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.

And then the lighting of the lamps.

*