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..From The WasteLand..T.S Eliot

The Wasteland is an amazing poem, which has baffled scholars for ages….basically it’s written in four vignettes, each spoken by a different character…the second vignette which I have excerpted here invites the reader to travel to a desert waste where the poet will show him something different "Your shadow at morning striding behind you, or your shadow at evening rising to meet you…. fear in a handful of dust”
“The Wasteland is considered to be the greatest work of all modernist literature….I have not sought to interpret this section in an esoteric way, but in a literal manner painted an empty landscape…empty of all save the wheeling birds above…in other words I have ignored the symbolism of Eliots verse which is actually a diatribe about post war life and sexual loss

Inks with Bamboo Pen on Handmade Paper