Grizabella Origins
T.S. Eliot
(1) “Rhapsody on a Windy Night”
…Remark the cat
Who hesitates toward you in the light of the door
Which opens on her like a grin.
You see the border of her coat is torn
Is torn and stained with sand,
And you see the corner of her eye
Twists like a crooked pin.”
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(2) “Grizabella, the Glamour Cat”*
She haunted many a low resort
Near the grimy road of Tottenham Court;
She flitted about the No Man’s Land
From The Rising Sun to The Friend at Hand.
And the postman sighed, as he scratched his head:
“You’d really ha’ thought she’d ought to be dead
And who would ever suppose that that
Was Grizabella, the Glamour Cat!”
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* from an unpublished fragment by T.S. Eliot.
“Memory”
–by Trevor Nunn and Andrew Lloyd Webber
Midnight,
Not a sound from the pavement.
Has the moon lost her memory,
She is smiling alone.
In the lamplight
The withered leaves collect at my feet,
And the wind begins to moan.
Memory,
All alone in the moonlight;
I can dream of the old days,
Life was beautiful then.
I remember the time I knew what
happiness was;
Let the memory live again.
Every street lamp seems to beat
A fatalistic warning.
Someone mutters and the
street lamp sputters,
And soon it will be morning.
Daylight,
I must wait for the sunrise.
I must think of a new life,
And I mustn’t give in.
When the dawn comes,
Tonight will be a memory, too.
And a new day will begin.
Burnt out ends of smoky days,
The stale cold smell of a morning.
A street lamp dies, another night is over;
Another day is dawning
Touch me,
It is so easy to leave me
All alone with the memory
Of my days in the sun.
If you touch me,
You’ll understand what happiness is.
Look, a new day has begun…
NOTE: In honor of National Poetry Month, each day a person’s birthday will be celebrated with a poem about or by him/her. In this case, Streisand popularized this poem/song. The poems come from all over the place.
Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry 