Agony in stony places
Gauguin, Christ on the Mount of Olives |
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.
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