Agony in stony places

Gauguin, Christ on the Mount of Olives

The first section of Part V recalls the Crucifixion of Christ. The night before was spent in the Garden of Gethsemane, in which Christ suffered the agony of knowledge of his fate; he was betrayed by Judas (frosty silence), arrested (torchlight) and taken before Pilate (prison and palace).

The thunder of spring over distant mountains suggests a very faint possibility of renewal, but it seems a forlorn hope to the disciples, who are fleeing Jerusalem, and anticipating their own deaths with a little patience.

They make their escape across a dry mountain waste land (rock and no water), where even sweat is dry and the thunder produces no rain; the mountains are imagined as the rotting teeth in a mouth too dry to spit.

The song of the hermit thrush (Drip drop drip drop...) offers false hope of water; the cicada /And dry grass singing is a callback to the biblical desert of The Burial of the Dead, where the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief.

Back to poem