head back calling
in the bright evening
in the neighbour’s olive tree —
‘wee-whit-h-h-h-h-who’ , ‘wee-wee-h-h-h-h-twuk’.
In all the wide chorus,
it was only this particular
that lifted the gloom
I’d been feeling all day.
Come see, I called
but when I looked back
only grey leaves,
the shiny green kalamata
and a bird-shaped hole
remained.
Image: William Kentridge, bird (detail) from his exhibition ‘that which we do not remember’ at the Art Gallery of NSW. A red-whiskered bulbul, is an introduced species endemic to Sydney, Melbourne. You can read more about T.S. Eliot’s objective correlative here.
Peter Frankis writes 
I love the space where the bird was. The poetry foundation article on Elliot was wonderful, especially his advice to be lazy, but most wonderful of all was the sound of Elliot reading Prufrock. He gave it such rythme and made me hear again the fatuous rhymes above the dark light of the matter.
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So glad you enjoyed. I’m still in two minds about Eliot – the intellect is so intimidating – it feels like one needs a classics degree to understand his Poetry. 😀
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I found his poetry on a recording as a teenager. I had no clue what The Waste Land was about but I was hypnotised by the sound of it and have thus been unafraid .
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