TSE in the Wind (was LSD in the Wind)

[David Simpson]

In TRP, as in TSE, the wind may bring redemption, loss, horror,
disappointment, memories, echoes, nothing at all, or hints of a new
world. Cf. Variations on a theme:

"Vacant shuttles
Weave the wind."
("Gerontion")
---
"'What is that noise?'
        The wind under the door.
'What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?'
        Nothing again nothing.

"Southwest wind
Carried down stream
The peal of bells"

"There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home"
(THE WASTE LAND)

"And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star."
("The Hollow Men")

"Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only
The wind will listen."
("Ash Wednesday")

"Till the wind shake a thousand whispers from the yew..."
("Ash Wednesday")

Dust in sunlight and memory in corners
Wait for the wind that chills toward the dead land."
("A Song for Simeon")

"The wind sprang up at four o'clock
The wind sprang up and broke the bells..."
("The Wind Sprang up at Four O'Clock")


Dave Monroe wrote:

> Wasteland.
>     Total, glaring, absolute.
>     Stark, terrible.
>     Nothing growing.
>     Nothing moving.
>     Ageless, perpetual silence.  Eternal solitude.  Only the piercing
> whine of the dry nameless wind blowing in from a distantly heard sea.
>     Desolation.  A universe of nakedness and nil.
>     Utter, supreme.  Everlasting.
>     Nothing of Life.  Only the unrelenting deathly stillness.  The
> infinity of zero, emptiness, nothingness.
>     This is the planet where Man has lost his supreme position in the
> scheme of things.  Listen to the Wind.
>     If it could speak [...]  The scorching, chilling breath of the
> wind's passage would carry the terrible tale to the walls of Infinity,
> down the endless corridors of the vast timelessness which seems to be
> the core of the land itself ...
>     Listen, the Wind ...
>     "This is the truth eternal: whatever thinks, can speak.  And
> whatever speaks can murder.
>     "But what is there to murder in this dead place?"
>     There is no answer for the Wind.
>     [...]
>     The Wind whines higher and louder, scoring over a dead landscape.
> Weird lambent lights suffuse the terrain.  There is a vast unearthly
> brilliance invested in a panorama of Nothingness.
>     [...]
>     The dead snads remained unmoving, the wind prowled over the
> monolithic expanse of desert-like desolation.  And isolation.  The
> unknown lights bathed the wasteland with a dull, inflexible glow.
>     [...]
>     A long-dead lady of stone eyes, stone ears and stone senses--whose
> only companion for an eon had been--
>     --the Wind.

--
"It's not dark yet...but it's gettin' there." -- Bob Dylan.
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homepage: http://www.depaul.edu/~dsimpson