T.S. Eliot 의 'The Waste Land and Other poems' 중

For I have known them all already, known them all-

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

I know the voices dying with a dying fall

Beneath the music from a farther room.

So how should I presume?

(skip)

I should have been a pair of ragged claws

Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

(skip)

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,

And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,

And in short, I was afraid.

<in 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock'>

-Let us take the air, in a tobacco trance,

Admire the monuments,

Discuss the late events,

Correct our watches by the public clocks.

Then sit for half an hour and drink our bocks.

(skip)

'Ah, my friend, you do not know, you do not know

What life is, you who hold it in your hands';

<in 'Portrait of a Lady'>

Here I am, an old man in a dry month,

Being read to by a boy, waiting fo rain,

(skip)

                  Tenants of the house,

Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season.

<in 'Gerontion'>

THE WASTE LAND

April is the cruelest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

(skip) 

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow 

Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,

You cannot say, or guess, for you know only

A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,

And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,

And the dry stone no sound of water. Only 

There is shadow under this red rock,

(skip) 

Your shadow at morning striding behind you

Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

<in 'I. The Burial of the Dead'>

Departed, have left no addresses.

By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept . . .

Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,

Sweet Thanes, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.

But at my back in a cold blast I hear

The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.

(skip) 

The river sweats

Oil and tar

(skip) 

'On Margate Sands.

I can connect.

Nothing with nothing.

The broken fingernails of dirty hands.

My people humble people who expect

Nothing.'

<in 'III. The Fire Sermon'>

                  A current under sea

Picked his bones in whispers.

< in 'IV. Death by Water'>

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 no 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 amount 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 dop 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 burst in the violet air

Falling towers

Jerusalem Athens Alexandria

Vennna 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 see my lands in order?

London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down

Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina

Guando fiam uti chelidon - O swallow swallow 

Le Prince d'Aquitaine a la tour abolie

(There he stepped back into the fire which refines,

When shall I be like the swallow?

The prince of Aquitaine, to the ruined tower.)

There fragments I have shored against my ruins 

Why then Ile fit you. Heronymo's mad againe.

Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.

             Shantih   shantih   shantih

- T.S. Eliot 의 'The Waste Land'를 읽은 지는 한참이 지났으나, 생각으로 곱씹느라 이제서야 감상을 적는다. 4월은 잔인한 달이라고 시작하는 이 시는 시 자체보다는 그 서두가 더 유명해서 오히려 그 진정한 의미를 생각하게 되는 시간을 잃게 되는 것 같다.

물이 없는 대지에서의 물에 대한 갈망의 모든 형태, 물을 머금은 바람, 물에 대한 소리, 그 말라터진 갈증과 갈망... 그에 대해 주어지는 헛된 희망, 그에게 4월이 잔인한 것은 죽어없어질 것에 생명을 주기 때문이다.
채워지지 않을 갈증에 주어지지 않을 물, 그 당시의 삶은 그에게 그러했을 것 같다. 또 누군가에게는 지금의 삶이 그러할 것이다. 비가 오지 않는 것처럼 위로 따위는 없다. 가물은 하늘을 바라보는 희망도 갉혀먹힌 퀭한 시선과 헛된 의성어만 있을 뿐이다.
그러나, 그의 시는 그 자체로 너무도 아름답고 신비해서 여태껏 읽는 이의 마음을 애타게 사로잡는다.