This line is lovely when taken out of context. Not in context mind you. The stark realization of the utter meaninglessness of life Eliot brings about me is not all that lovely. The lapses of meaninglessness anyway; but out of context death by water seems so very gentle and kind. Whispers. Whispers may be the most lovely (not loveliest) form of verbal communication. Whispers to me at this point in my life are not panicked or fearful. They are secretive and warm; exchanges between lovers containing words that make no sense to others. If they do make sense, they do not make the right sense. Hence they are not spoken but whispered.
Perhaps the water could pick the flesh off your bones in minuscule portions, so slight that you do not notice their absence. Maybe the pain can come in such gentle portions that you do not notice its presence. Perhaps death can be masked by the sound of small-river waves (very unlike sea-waves) crashing against fishing boats or even each other during a certain kind of wind. Maybe the variances in the wind and thus the sound of the water can distract you as your body transitions into a corpse.
And what of you entering the river the right amount of hours before a full moon? And not just any full moon, the especially eerie full moon that has a tinge of yellow. I do not know how long it takes the river to erode a human body, but wouldn’t it be so beautiful if your body surfaced just as the moon shone completely? Oh how it would wash out the paleness on the few remaining morsels of your flesh, your teeth exposed into an ill-placed grin (due to the gentility with which the river picked your bones), turn the raw reds and purples into mere lilacs and soft pinks.
For the record the line is from T.S. Eliot's Waste Land.
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