Senile Ramblings
Someone once said
that April is the
cruellest month,
but not from
where I'm standing.
It's a mind blowingly
beautiful spring
evening. The kind
that makes you feel
alive after a long,
cold, miserable winter.
My big overcoat is
back in the wardrobe,
along with the thick,
heavy sweaters. It's
time for the T-shirts
to come out of
the metaphorical
mothballs. Actually,
I've never seen a
mothball in my
life. I'm not part of
the make do and
mend generation.
We throw things
away and go to
buy another. I feel
slightly ashamed of
this, my parents
tried to teach me to
be better than that.
But, never mind my
senile ramblings, it's
a gorgeous night
that says summer is
on the way, and I for
one am more than
ready for it.
Someone once said
that April is the
cruellest month,
but not from
where I'm standing.
It's a mind blowingly
beautiful spring
evening. The kind
that makes you feel
alive after a long,
cold, miserable winter.
My big overcoat is
back in the wardrobe,
along with the thick,
heavy sweaters. It's
time for the T-shirts
to come out of
the metaphorical
mothballs. Actually,
I've never seen a
mothball in my
life. I'm not part of
the make do and
mend generation.
We throw things
away and go to
buy another. I feel
slightly ashamed of
this, my parents
tried to teach me to
be better than that.
But, never mind my
senile ramblings, it's
a gorgeous night
that says summer is
on the way, and I for
one am more than
ready for it.
April is the cruellest month, breeding
ReplyDeleteLilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
--T. S. Eliot, opening lines of "The Waste Land" (1922)
It may be useful to compare these lines to the opening of "The Canterbury Tales," which Geoffrey Chaucer wrote between 1387 and 1400:
When April with his showers sweet with fruit
The drought of March has pierced unto the root
And bathed each vein with liquor that has power
To generate therein and sire the flower
Eliot transformed Chaucer's verb “pierce” to motivate an entirely different, and opposing, view of the month.
Excellent poem, I dig Ian's work.
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