What we can learn from water

Something I love about T.S Eliot's poems is his understanding and love of the theme water. Having grown up by the sea, I can appreciate how Eliot always said his childhood spent by a river affected his whole world view. It is impossible to be a child near the sea or a river and not develop a sense of other. By this I mean you see that there is an alternative to land, you know that journeys on the water will take you places you can't imagine, you watch waves build independently and you wonder whether there is a greater power out there.

Eliot's third Quartet, The Dry Salvages, said to be named after some rocks off the north east coast of Massachusetts, was written during the Second World War. In it he asks such interesting questions about nature and science, about the point of progress and whether something timeless is watching us all stumble away from the point of life.

I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river
Is a strong brown god - sullen, untamed and intractable,
Patient to some degree, at first recognised as a frontier;
Useful, untrustworthy, as a conveyor of commerce;
Then only a problem confronting the builder of bridges.

How interesting that the river starts this sentence as a strong and untamed god and ends as a mere problem to be overcome. I think Eliot was exploring a Christian faith when he wrote this so he is perhaps playing with the convenient ebb and flow of faith in a God that is struggling to find a place in a modern world. Not only is he personifying the river here, but he seems to be enabling it to grow through human stages - starting as a sullen and difficult child and maturing as it finds its uses.

The problem once solved, the brown god is almost forgotten
By the dwellers in cities - ever, however, implacable,
Keeping his seasons and rages, destroyer, reminder
Of what men choose to forget. Unhonoured, unpropitiated
By worshippers of the machine, but waiting, watching and waiting.

It's so easy to forget that the planet was here long before we were. I'm sure that watching the war unfold around him, Eliot was particularly conscious of man's poorer decisions and the planet paying the price. How quick we are to dismiss the natural world in favour of worshipping the machine - whether that machine is a gun or a mobile phone. Quite right to characterise the river as periodically reminding us that although we can ignore, pollute or attempt to control it, it could wipe us all out in one wild rage. What I find most unsettling in this extract though is the notion that nature is our spectator - a knowledgeable spectator - witnessing us all charging in the wrong direction. What is he waiting for?

His rhythm was present in the nursery bedroom,
In the rank ailanthus of the April dooryard,
In the smell of grapes on the autumn table,
And the evening circle in the winter gaslight.

Here Eliot weaves time into his exploration again. He takes the presence of the river from the nursery, through April and autumn to the evening - a lifetime. The river is ever present. Like a god. This introduces notions of legacy and immortality. Is man in constant struggle to compete with nature to achieve a timeless existence? I think I am quite happy in the knowledge that I am a mere drop along the way for our planet's rivers and seas. I take comfort from the knowledge that these waters will outlive me by centuries. I quite like the idea of them watching over my children when I am gone. I can only hope that my boys will take some time away from machine worshipping to contemplate the wisdom of the sea.