The Waste Land - V. What the Thunder Said

Eliot Thomas Stearns

After the torchlight red on sweaty faces     
After the frosty silence in the gardens     
After the agony in stony places     
The shouting and the crying
Prison and place and reverberation     
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains     
He who was living is now dead     
We who were living are now dying     
With a little patience     
 
Here is no water but only rock     
Rock and no water and the sandy road     
The road winding above among the mountains     
Which are mountains of rock without water     
If there were water we should stop and drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think     
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand     
If there were only water amongst the rock     
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit     
Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit
There is not even silence in the mountains     
But dry sterile thunder without rain     
There is not even solitude in the mountains     
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl     
From doors of mudcracked houses
                                 If there were water
  And no rock     
  If there were rock     
  And also water     
  And water     
  A spring
  A pool among the rock     
  If there were the sound of water only     
  Not the cicada     
  And dry grass singing     
  But sound of water over a rock
  Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees     
  Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop     
  But there is no water     
 
Who is the third who walks always beside you?     
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road     
There is always another one walking beside you     
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded     
I do not know whether a man or a woman     
—But who is that on the other side of you?
 
What is that sound high in the air     
Murmur of maternal lamentation     
Who are those hooded hordes swarming     
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth     
Ringed by the flat horizon only
What is the city over the mountains     
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air     
Falling towers     
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria     
Vienna London
Unreal     
 
A woman drew her long black hair out tight     
And fiddled whisper music on those strings     
And bats with baby faces in the violet light     
Whistled, and beat their wings
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall     
And upside down in air were towers     
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours     
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.     
 
In this decayed hole among the mountains
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing     
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel     
There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home.     
It has no windows, and the door swings,     
Dry bones can harm no one.
Only a cock stood on the rooftree     
Co co rico co co rico     
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust     
Bringing rain     
 
Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
Waited for rain, while the black clouds     
Gathered far distant, over Himavant.     
The jungle crouched, humped in silence.     
Then spoke the thunder     
DA
Datta: what have we given?     
My friend, blood shaking my heart     
The awful daring of a moment's surrender     
Which an age of prudence can never retract     
By this, and this only, we have existed
Which is not to be found in our obituaries     
Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider     
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor     
In our empty rooms     
DA
Dayadhvam: I have heard the key     
Turn in the door once and turn once only     
We think of the key, each in his prison     
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison     
Only at nightfall, aetherial rumours
Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus     
DA     
Damyata: The boat responded     
Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar     
The sea was calm, your heart would have responded
Gaily, when invited, beating obedient     
To controlling hands     
 
                      I sat upon the shore     
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me     
Shall I at least set my lands in order?
 
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down     
 
Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina     
Quando fiam ceu chelidon—O swallow swallow     
Le Prince d'Aquitaine à la tour abolie     
These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe.     
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.     
 
            Shantih shantih shantih