V. What the Thunder Said¹

After the torchlight red on sweaty faces

After the frosty silence in the gardens

After the agony in stony places²

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 rock³

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-thrush⁴ 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?⁵

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 air⁶

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 rico⁷

In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust

Bringing rain

 

Ganga⁸ was sunken, and the limp leaves

Waited for rain, while the black clouds

Gathered far distant, over Himavant.⁹

The jungle crouched, humped in silence.

Then spoke the thunder

DA

Datta:¹⁰ 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 spider¹¹

Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor

In our empty rooms

DA

Dayadhvam: I have heard the key¹²

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 Coriolanus¹³

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 me¹⁴

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 affina¹⁵

Quando fiam uti chelidon¹⁶— O swallow swallow

Le Prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie ¹⁷

These fragments I have shored against my ruins

Why then He fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.¹⁸

Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.

Shantih shantih shantih¹⁹