The Game: TS Eliot

November is the cruelest month, breeding

Yalies out of the far-flung dung, mixing

Bulldogs and good Pilgrims, stirring

False hope with the smell of ambition.

What are the amateurs that clutch, what egos grow

Out of this rubbish four man pile-up? Son of Yale,

You cannot say, or guess or speak, for you slur only

A heap of half-remembered parties and one-night stands

Oh, do not ask me “Who is she?”

I’ll never see her again.

sip sip sip

jug jug jug

Mistakes so unforced!

cuckoo cuckoo

We’ll show you our shadow

rising before you as you eat our dust

(Come under the shadow of this crimson rock)

We’ll show you cowardice in a fistful of guts.

Monsieur John Harvard, famous truth-teller,

Had a bad cold from being pissed on, nevertheless

Is known to be the wisest man in Ivydom

with a winning scorecard. Here, said he,

to his progeny, I see another epic victory.

Here is the fallen enemy with three broken shins,

Here is the black-eyed jack, and this card,

Which is blank, augurs total upset.

Unrivaled City,

Under the murky blue Haven coming from the West

A crowd flowed over the Charles River, so many,

I had not thought defeat had undone so may.

That casualty you sustained last year by our hand,

Has it begun to heal? Will it happen again?

Or does the sudden frost make you quake in your cleats?

Oh keep that Bull-Dog far hence, that’s foe to man,

You! hypocrite étudiant—mon semblable,—mon frère!”

HURRY UP PLEASE ITS GAME TIME

Let’s get on and be done with it.

Sweet Charles, run swiftly, till we end this bloodbath,

Sweet Charles, run swiftly, for we bear them much wrath.

But on the horizon I hear

The rattle of bones, and grin from ear to ear.