Dry Sterile Thunder, Without Rain

Photograph by Dave Wilson, Kuwait; 1991

Here is no water but only rock

Rock and no water and the sandy road

The road winding 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...

T.S. Eliot; The Wasteland (1922)