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 not 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

About the Poet

TS Eliot (1888-1965) as a poet and critic came to define the modernist movement and still dominates the literary landscape of the last century. He was born in St. Louis, Missouri to a prominent local family. He attended Harvard where his eclectic course of studies introduced him to Hindu and Buddhist philosophy and a working knowledge of Sanskrit (he already knew Latin, Greek, French and German). After a year in Paris, Eliot began work at Harvard on his doctoral thesis on the philosophy of FH Bradley. A career in academia beckoned, but whilst studying for his PhD Eliot had a revelatory encounter with the work of the French Symbolist poets, in particular Jules Laforgue, and began composing poetry under their influence. In 1914 Eliot took up a post at Merton College, Oxford, as a visiting fellow in philosophy. Although he didn't intend it at the time, this move was to prove decisive: England became his home for the rest of his life and, as a writer, Eliot came to align himself with the European rather than American tradition. In 1915, after a short courtship, Eliot married Vivien Haigh-Wood, a charming but emotionally unstable woman from a conventional upper-middle class English family. The marriage was to be deeply unhappy, punctuated by breakdowns in Vivien's mental and physical health, culminating in her commitment to a mental hospital in 1938. The newly-wed poet struggled to earn a living, as a teacher, reviewer and lecturer, eventually gaining a measure of financial security when he joined Lloyd's Bank in London in 1917. The war years in the capital were formative for Eliot's career, particularly with regard to his friendship with Ezra Pound which connected him to leading figures in the international avant garde. It was Pound, in his role as a friend, editor and promoter, who did most to establish Eliot as the pre-eminent figure in the modernist movement, particularly through his decisive editorial intervention in The Waste Land. Eliot's literary career now gained momentum: Prufrock and Other Observations appeared in 1917 and made a strong impact. However, growing professional success masked personal suffering as the Eliot's marriage disintegrated, prompting a nervous breakdown in Eliot which resulted in three months' enforced rest. It was during this period that The Waste Land was composed, his bleak masterpiece of psychic fragmentation. With its collage of voices, its violent disjunctions in tone and wealth of cultural allusion, The Waste Land also resonated as a depiction of the ruins of post-war European civilisation. It was published in The Criterion, a quarterly cultural that Eliot edited until 1939. This role, along with his involvement with another important journal, The Egoist, and his position from 1925 as one of the Directors of Faber & Faber established Eliot as the leading literary critic of his time, as well as its most famous poet. His essay on the impersonality of the poet and his concept of the "objective correlative", to name but two of his best known ideas, have been part of the critical currency ever since. However, the 1920s also saw Eliot become increasingly conservative in outlook, particularly following his conversion to the Anglican Church in 1927, the same year he became a British Citizen. His religious conversion was to have a far-reaching impact on the rest of his career, culminating in the Christian meditations of Four Quartets (1943), his last major poetic achievement and the work which secured him the 1948 Nobel Prize for Literature. From the 1930s, inspired by his love of Shakespeare and the Jacobean dramatists, Eliot poured much of his creative energy into attempting to revive the verse drama to varying success, with Murder in the Cathedral and The Cocktail Party usually considered the most effective of these experiments. By then he'd affected a separation from Vivien who died in a private mental hospital in 1947. A decade later Eliot married Valerie Fletcher and enjoyed a measure of personal happiness which had previously eluded him. He died, of emphysema, in 1965 and was buried at East Coker, the Somerset village which gave its name to one of the Four Quartets and from where his ancestors had emigrated to America in the 17th Century. For the man who wrote "in my end is my beginning" this circularity was profoundly resonant. Aspects of Eliot's reputation have been debated since, but he remains a pervasive presence in poetry in English.

The Poetry Archive is delighted to present a significant amount of recorded material. Journey of the Magi was written soon after his conversion to Anglicanism in 1927. It is a dramatic monologue of Browningesque ambition and subtlety and is therefore particularly suited to being read aloud. Four Quartets, Eliot's moving meditation on time and its relationship to the human condition, draws on his deep knowledge of mysticism and philosophy. In these extracts from East Coker and Little Gidding can be seen the interweaving of theme and motif which characterises the sequence as a whole and which gives Four Quartets the dense aural patterning of music. The recording of The Waste Land presented here is a particularly exciting find. It dates from 1935, a decade earlier than the well-known and much more widely available 1946 recording. Whilst the sound quality is understandably not so good, the recording is fascinating for Eliot's faster, more energetic rendition. Listening to this urgent interpretation blows the dust of this iconic poem and helps us encounter it afresh.

 

http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=7630