The Waste Land (Part V) by T.S. Eliot

V. What the Thunder Said

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 palace 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, aethereal 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 uti 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 

NOTE:  "The Waste Land is unified by its theme of despair. Its opening lines introduce the ideas of life's ultimate futility despite momentary flashes of hope. The poem goes on to present a sequence of short sketches following an individual's baffled search for spiritual peace. It concludes with resignation at the never-ending nature of the search.” -  www.bachelorandmaster.com

The Fairy Thorn by Sir Samuel Ferguson

“GET up, our Anna dear, from the weary spinning-wheel;
For your father’s on the hill, and your mother is asleep;
Come up above the crags, and we’ll dance a Highland reel
Around the Fairy Thorn on the steep.”
At Anna Grace’s door ’twas thus the maidens cried,	5
Three merry maidens fair in kirtles of the green;
And Anna laid the rock and the weary wheel aside,
The fairest of the four, I ween.
They’re glancing through the glimmer of the quiet eve,
Away in milky wavings of neck and ankle bare;	10
The heavy-sliding stream in its sleepy song they leave,
And the crags in the ghostly air.
And linking hand-in-hand, and singing as they go,
The maids along the hillside have ta’en their fearless way,
Till they come to where the rowan trees in lonely beauty grow	15
Beside the Fairy Hawthorn grey.
The Hawthorn stands between the ashes tall and slim,
Like matron with her twin grand-daughters at her knee;
The rowan berries cluster o’er her low head grey and dim
In ruddy kisses sweet to see.	20
The merry maidens four have ranged them in a row,
Between each lovely couple a stately rowan stem,
And away in mazes wavy, like skimming birds they go,
Oh, never carolled bird like them!
But solemn is the silence on the silvery haze	25
That drinks away their voices in echoless repose,
And dreamily the evening has stilled the haunted braes,
And dreamier the gloaming grows.
And sinking one by one, like lark-notes from the sky,
When the falcon’s shadow saileth across the open shaw,	30
Are hushed the maidens’ voices, as cowering down they lie
In the flutter of their sudden awe.
For, from the air above and the grassy ground beneath,
And from the mountain-ashes and the old white-thorn between,
A power of faint enchantment doth through their beings breathe,	35
And they sink down together on the green.
They sink together silent, and stealing side to side,
They fling their lovely arms o’er their drooping necks so fair,
Then vainly strive again their naked arms to hide,
For their shrinking necks again are bare.	40
Thus clasped and prostrate all, with their heads together bowed,
Soft o’er their bosoms beating—the only human sound—
They hear the silky footsteps of the silent fairy crowd,
Like a river in the air gliding round.
Nor scream can any raise, nor prayer can any say,	45
But wild, wild the terror of the speechless three—
For they feel fair Anna Grace drawn silently away,
By whom they dare not look to see.
They feel their tresses twine with her parting locks of gold,
And the curls elastic falling, as her head withdraws.	50
They feel her sliding arms from their trancèd arms unfold,
But they dare not look to see the cause;
For heavy on their senses the faint enchantment lies
Through all that night of anguish and perilous amaze
And neither fear nor wonder can ope their quivering eyes,	55
Or their limbs from the cold ground raise;
Till out of night the earth has rolled her dewy side,
With every haunted mountain and streamy vale below;
When, as the mist dissolves in the yellow morningtide,
The maiden’s trance dissolveth so.	60
Then fly the ghastly three as swiftly as they may,
And tell their tale of sorrow to anxious friends in vain—
They pined away and died within the year and day,
And ne’er was Anna Grace seen again.

The Guest House by Jellaludin Rumi

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

— Jellaludin Rumi,
translation by Coleman Barks

Heroic Simile by Richard Hass

When the swordsman fell in Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai

in the gray rain,

in the Cinemascope and the Tokugawa dynasty,

he fell straight as a pine, he fell

as Ajax fell in Homer

in chanted dactyls and the tree was so huge

the woodsman returned for two days

to that lucky place before he was done with the sawing

and on the third day he brought his uncle.

They stacked logs in the resinous air,

hacking the small limbs off,

tying those bundles separately.

The slabs near the root

were quartered and still they were awkwardly large;

the logs from the midtree they halved:

ten bundles and four great piles of fragrant wood,

moons and quarter moons and half moons

ridged by the saw’s tooth.

The woodsman and the old man his uncle

are standing in midforest

on a floor of pine silt and spring mud.

They have stopped working

because they are tired and because

I have imagined no pack animal   

or primitive wagon. They are too canny

to call in neighbors and come home

with a few logs after three days’ work.

They are waiting for me to do something   

or for the overseer of the Great Lord

to come and arrest them.

How patient they are!

The old man smokes a pipe and spits.

The young man is thinking he would be rich

if he were already rich and had a mule.

Ten days of hauling

and on the seventh day they’ll probably

be caught, go home empty-handed

or worse. I don’t know

whether they’re Japanese or Mycenaean

and there’s nothing I can do.

The path from here to that village

is not translated. A hero, dying,

gives off stillness to the air.

A man and a woman walk from the movies

to the house in the silence of separate fidelities.

There are limits to imagination.

The Gaffe by C.K. Williams

1. 

If that someone who’s me yet not me yet who judges me is always with me,    

as he is, shouldn’t he have been there when I said so long ago that thing I said?   

If he who rakes me with such not trivial shame for minor sins now were there then,   

shouldn’t he have warned me he’d even now devastate me for my unpardonable affront?   

I’m a child then, yet already I’ve composed this conscience-beast, who harries me:   

is there anything else I can say with certainty about who I was, except that I, that he,   

could already draw from infinitesimal transgressions complex chords of remorse,   

and orchestrate ever undiminishing retribution from the hapless rest of myself?   

2 

The son of some friends of my parents has died, and my parents, paying their call,   

take me along, and I’m sent out with the dead boy’s brother and some others to play.   

We’re joking around, and some words come to my mind, which to my amazement are said.   

How do you know when you can laugh when somebody dies, your brother dies? 

is what’s said, and the others go quiet, the backyard goes quiet, everyone stares,   

and I want to know now why that someone in me who’s me yet not me let me say it.   

Shouldn’t he have told me the contrition cycle would from then be ever upon me,   

it didn’t matter that I’d really only wanted to know how grief ends, and when?   

3 

I could hear the boy’s mother sobbing inside, then stopping, sobbing then stopping.   

Was the end of her grief already there? Had her someone in her told her it would end?   

Was her someone in her kinder to her, not tearing at her, as mine did, still does, me,   

for guessing grief someday ends? Is that why her sobbing stopped sometimes?   

She didn’t laugh, though, or I never heard her. How do you know when you can laugh? 

Why couldn’t someone have been there in me not just to accuse me, but to explain?   

The kids were playing again, I was playing, I didn’t hear anything more from inside.   

The way now sometimes what’s in me is silent, too, and sometimes, though never really, forgets.

Burial Rites by Philip Levine

Everyone comes back here to die

as I will soon. The place feels right

since it’s half dead to begin with.

Even on a rare morning of rain,

like this morning, with the low sky

hoarding its riches except for

a few mock tears, the hard ground

accepts nothing. Six years ago

I buried my mother’s ashes

beside a young lilac that’s now

taller than I, and stuck the stub

of a rosebush into her dirt,

where like everything else not

human it thrives. The small blossoms

never unfurl; whatever they know

they keep to themselves until

a morning rain or a night wind

pares the petals down to nothing.

Even the neighbor cat who shits

daily on the paths and then hides

deep in the jungle of the weeds

refuses to purr. Whatever’s here

is just here, and nowhere else,

so it’s right to end up beside

the woman who bore me, to shovel

into the dirt whatever’s left

and leave only a name for some-

one who wants it. Think of it,

my name, no longer a portion

of me, no longer inflated

or bruised, no longer stewing

in a rich compost of memory

or the simpler one of bone shards,

dirt, kitty litter, wood ashes,

the roots of the eucalyptus

I planted in ’73,

a tiny me taking nothing,

giving nothing, and free at last.

ODE TO A GRECIAN URN by John Keats

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,

       Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,

Sylvan historian, who canst thus express

       A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:

What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape

       Of deities or mortals, or of both,

               In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?

       What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?

What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?

               What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

       Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;

Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,

       Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:

Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave

       Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;

               Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,

Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;

       She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,

               For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed

         Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;

And, happy melodist, unwearied,

         For ever piping songs for ever new;

More happy love! more happy, happy love!

         For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,

                For ever panting, and for ever young;

All breathing human passion far above,

         That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,

                A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?

         To what green altar, O mysterious priest,

Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,

         And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?

What little town by river or sea shore,

         Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,

                Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?

And, little town, thy streets for evermore

         Will silent be; and not a soul to tell

                Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede

         Of marble men and maidens overwrought,

With forest branches and the trodden weed;

         Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought

As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!

         When old age shall this generation waste,

                Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe

Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,

         "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all

                Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."