A Nice Little Place in the Stars

let us go then, you and i,
when the evening is spread out against the sky
like a patient etherised upon a table;
let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
the muttering retreat

of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
and sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
streets that follow like a tedious argument
of insidious intent
to lead you to an overwhelming question …

oh, do not ask, “what is it?”
let us go and make our visit….

…and indeed there will be time
for the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
rubbing its back upon the window-panes;

there will be time, there will be time
to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
there will be time to murder and create,
and time for all the works and days of hands
that lift and drop a question on your plate;

time for you and time for me,
and time yet for a hundred indecisions,
and for a hundred visions and revisions,
before the taking of a toast and tea.

-t.s. eliot