“April is the Cruellest Month…”

T.S. Eliot reads from The Waste­land, one of the great poems of the last cen­tu­ry. It begins famous­ly:

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.

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