The Waste Land

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 arch-duke’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 mountain, in the evening, I’ll not forget a thing until we come back.

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.

II. A Game of Chess

The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne, Glowed on the marble, where the glass Held up by standards wrought with the bosses of the sea By ocean and the Copacabana’s hedge, When she came in and saw the place she said:

“Now, behold a great pile of stones, Give me the sun, give me the questioning of the world.”

(And she said, “Give me change.”)

“If you remember feet that walked out of green daylight,” She answered, and she said it to the Killers: “Stop the long way out, everything instinctive and instinct.”

And she said.

Would you hold me in your arms and tell me more?

III. The Fire Sermon …

• TS Eliot