From 'The Wasteland' (1922)

"April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain... "

I never before realised just how sensual T.S. Eliot could be - I guess I was too busy grappling with the monolith that is Modernism to taste the honey in the poetry. Although I do seem to remember a student friend, 25 years ago, declaiming the lines in the April rain, haloed by a London lamppost, all blond locks and plum-in-the-mouth, trying his luck at literary seduction. He failed. I guess I should have listened harder. Or maybe I'm being unfair to myself. Maybe what it took to come around to the power of these few short and very famous lines was simply to turn 45 (as opposed to 21).

But isn't this wonderful? Those short, pithy images that the mind can't help lingering over. Those genius verbs at the ends of the lines when they should be at the beginnings of the next, pushing the reader onward, just as the new buds push out of the earth. Making us feel slightly short of breath, perhaps. And perhaps evoking his Romantic forebear, Keats, and his ode 'To Autumn'.

Of course, Eliot is talking about mid-life reminiscences (memory and desire), long-unused senses (dull roots), pain to come (the cruelest month)...

Isn't he?

Image courtesy University of Toledo Libraries, USA.