140
MARIUS BEWLEY
He pulls his feet with a slow sucking sound
From the floor where he is stuck, like a horse in concrete,
And, reaching to her, whispers patiently
-Whispers, or the wind whispers, water whispers "Say.
Say. Say now. Say again."
A slow
Delicious shudder runs along her spine:
She takes off her straw sailor.
Red again, and long enough to sit on,
Her hair floats out to him-and, slowly, she holds out to him
In their white, new-washed gloves, her dry
Brown leather hands, and whispers: "Father,
If you come any closer I'll call Father."
He melts, in dark drops, to a little dark
Pool drying on the floor, to Su-Su . It is Su-Su!
She holds out to the little dark
Grave drying in the grass, her little dry
Bouquet of ice-plant, of geranium,
And reads:
In loving memory of Su-Su
I, II, III, IV.
She says: "That four is a mistake.
One two three is right, but leave out four."
While there are important differences, there are also similari–
ties between this poem and "Gerontion." We are not as narrowly
confined within the orbit of this woman's thoughts as we are
in
the
case of Eliot's old man, but in the theater of her mind we nonethe–
less perceive the quality and the defeat of a lifetime. And behind
the individual life we sense the force of larger pressures. This epi.
sode from the past is not recovered
in
tranquil recollection. It
be–
longs to a comprehensive instant which is a telescoping of a total life
draining into emptiness. The future is ominously gathered
in
by
that closing reference to Su-Su IV (the woman's pet Pekinese):
"That four is a mistake." Su-Su IV is still alive, and at her feet
A lifetime measured by the graves of dogs all bearing the same
name is as Websterian and portentous as any recent image I recol·
lect. The water imagery underscores the conception of time as a
flux in which present, past, and future are dissolved, and at the
same time it bears the flotsam of sexual implications that are essen·
tial to the poem. The poetry has a shimmering quality that both
