poetry and prose

I hear that April is National Poetry Month, which, naturally, makes me want to post poetry excerpts. And I would, really, but today is a "Kubla Khan" day, and I'm just not sure that's the message I want to send to the world. Maybe a bit of "Tintern Abbey," instead, and just keep it all in the Lyrical Ballads family, but then I'd have to admit to occasionally liking Wordsworth.

Fie on the Romantics, anyway.

I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD

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.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke's,
My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

[... etc.]

~ T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland, 1922, 1-30. How creepy is it that I have The Wasteland saved on my computer in a folder of documents (poetry, mostly) entitled "Stuff By Other People." Really now.