"April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers...."
- The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot
I've always loved this and studying it takes a life time. Even if you don't know of all he alludes to in the poem, it is a long stirring of "memory and desire" - so much like spring time when things forgotten shoot up through the fertile ground.
Spring is so tricky. It is my spring break and the weather is beautiful except that the temp was in the 30's this morning and it will only be about 60 today. That is not warm for me. Nevertheless I will be out and about buying Easter lilies for the church today with Mary's unwilling help. She is sleeping late, so maybe she will wake up with renewed vigor after our long and arduous shopping trip. I wish we could have accomplished our goal of finding a mother-of-the-groom dress for my mom yesterday. Maybe some of the possibilities will pan out.
Off I go....
By the road to the contagious hospital
ReplyDeleteunder the surge of the blue
mottled clouds driven from the
northeast - a cold wind. Beyond, the
waste of broad, muddy fields
brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen
patches of standing water
the scattering of tall trees
All along the road the reddish
purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
stuff of bushes and small trees
with dead, brown leaves under them
leafless vines -
Lifeless in appearance, sluggish
dazed spring approaches -
They enter the new world naked,
cold, uncertain of all
save that they enter. All about them
the cold, familiar wind -
Now the grass, tomorrow
the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf
One by one objects are defined -
It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf
But now the stark dignity of
entrance - Still, the profound change
has come upon them: rooted they
grip down and begin to awaken