The Waist Land: A Parody Read online

V. What the Thunders Said

  After the torchlight red on sweaty faces

  After the frosty finger in the gardens

  After the agony in stony places

  The shouting and the crying

  Treason and palace and accusation

  Of thunderous wellspring taunts of distant mountains

  He who was dying does now live

  We who were dying are now living

  With but little patience

  Here is the red rock spring water

  Rock and much water and the golden road

  The road straightening over and through the mountains

  Which are mountains of snow with much water

  If there were not water we should not stop and drink

  Among the rock one can but stop and think

  Sweat breeze dried and feet are in wet sand

  Is there yet only water among the rock?

  Life mountain mouth of hallowed teeth that can but spit

  In dust, the blind eyes to see here; one can neither lie nor sit

  There is dance and laughter in the mountains

  Not dry sterile thunder without rain

  There is not even icy night frost in the mountains

  But red cheeked faces clear and mild

  In doors of crystalline houses

  Where there flows water

  Out of rock

  If there were no rock

  Nor any water

  No water

  Nor spring

  Nor pool among the rock

  If there were the sound of cracked rock only

  And scorpion tails

  And grassless silence

  But sound of blown sand over a rock

  Where the vulture wings past dead pine trees

  Woosh, woosh; woosh, woosh, vulture wings

  But there is freshet water

  Who is the first who walks always before you?

  When I count, there is he, you and I together

  And when I look behind down the golden road

  There is always an angel guardian walking behind you

  Gliding wrapped in a white mantle, unhooded

  I do not know whether a man or an angelic wife

  - - And here I am on the left side of you?

  What is that song high in the air

  Melody of maternal revelation

  Look at those choral orders swaying

  To an endless psalm, humbling the whole wide earth

  Ringed by the azure horizon, a sea

  What is the city before the azure ocean?

  Taps and uniforms and horns to the violin air

  Falling towers

  Babylon Athens Alexandria

  Vienna London

  So real

  A woman blew her scented breath ever so light

  A fluted whisper music on those reeds

  And cherubs with baby faces in the lustrous light

  Whistled, and beat their wings

  And dived head downward and back up again

  And from a down an air from towers

  Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours

  Those voices singing, so were syncopated urns, throated wells.

  On this gilded plain among the towers

  In spangled glass light, the glass is singing

  Throughout the vibrant naves, about the bright plain

  As with the chorale in chapel, organ winded dome.

  Unstained glass windows prismatic, and the doors gold,

  Resurrected bones that harm no one.

  A vain cock stood on the life tree

  Cock a-doodle do, cock a-cock-a-caw

  In a flash like lightning. Then a damp gust

  Bringing rainbows about a throne

  The Ganges rose the high mountains sank to covered leaves

  The Monsoons cease, while hill water flows on

  Gathered far distant, through Himalayan subsidence

  The jungle cooled, the highlands warmed

  Then spoke the thunders

  Abba

  Abba Elohim: what have you received?

  My friend, blood flowing pierced heart

  The awful pain that in a moment’s surrender

  Which an age of folly can never repay

  By this, and this only, we have life in truth

  Which is not to be found in our obituaries

  Or in memories caught in spiderwebs maleficent

  Or under seals tampered with by the mean solicitor

  In our panic rooms

  Abba

  Abba Elohim: I have felt the key

  Turn in my heart once and for all time

  We think of the key, each in his rapture

  Thinking of the key, each confirms a rapture

  Only at Satan's fall, aethereal defeats

  Revive for eternity Coriolanus broken treaty

  Abba

  Abba Elohim: The ark divine regales

  Regales, as the hand expert tills the barque sublime

  The river was calm, your heart skips with joy upon the waters

  Regaling, when excited, beating obedient

  To exalting hands

  I waded up to the shore

  Fish dancing, skipping like dolphins, water splashing like airs about me

  Shall I at least set my hands in upon this ordered land?

  London Bridge is falling down falling Arizona

  Poi si rivela nel foco che gli affina

  Quando fiam come una colomba - - O eagle eagle

  [trans. Then he reveals himself in the refining fire/When shall I flame like a dove]

  La duchesse d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie. Dieu soit loué!

  [trans. The Duchess of Aquitaine in the ruined tower. Praise be to God!]

  These passages I have sailed to my salvation:

  Why then he'll stiff you. Hieronymo’s faking madness again.

  Though he feels he's in a play, he ain't anyway

  The child knows, sees, the actor, the stage

  Alas, all the world's a battlefield

  But why, why?

  Good, good, but you see it is

  Till Abba Elohim comes

  And never beat the sword of truth to plowshares

  Lest you plow folly and your own grave.

  Shangri-La, Shangri-La, Shangri-La

  #####

  Other Works by the Author

  (Available online)

  Elements of Physics: Matter

  Elements of Physics: Space

  Elements of Physics: Time

  Logic: An Essay

  Space as Infinity: An Essay

  Space as Infinity II: An Essay

  Unified Field Theory: An Essay

  Collected Poems I

  Golden Age Essays

  Golden Age Essays II

  Golden Age Essays III

  Golden Age Essays IV

  Golden Age Essays V

  About the Author

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