Many Colors

From "Gerontion"
by T. S. Eliot

Here I am, an old man in a dry month,                                                                                    
Being read to by a boy, waiting for rain.                                                                                    
I was neither at the hot gates                                                                                    
Nor fought in the warm rain                                                                                    
Nor knee deep in the salt marsh, heaving a cutlass,
Bitten by flies, fought.                                                                                    
My house is a decayed house,                                                                                    
And the jew squats on the window sill, the owner,                                                                                    
Spawned in some estaminet of Antwerp,                                                                                    
Blistered in Brussels, patched and peeled in London.
The goat coughs at night in the field overhead;                                                                                    
Rocks, moss, stonecrop, iron, merds.                                                                                    
The woman keeps the kitchen, makes tea,                                                                                    
Sneezes at evening, poking the peevish gutter.                                                           
        I an old man,
 A dull head among windy spaces.