The Waste Land

Part 4 - Death by Water

Phelbas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss.
                                        A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering whirpool.
                                        Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

Part 5 - 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 slience 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
Why 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 burst 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 upsdie down in air were towers
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.
(...)

    The theme of water in this poem