April Is the Cruelest Month

T. S. Eliot begins his "Wasteland," a poem many consider his finest and an enduring example of Modernism, with these four lines:

April is the cruelest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

This is, of course, an odd take on the month of April, at least in the northern hemisphere.  Springtime is most often greeted with delight.  One of the oldest poems in the language (I promise you it's English) has a completely different--and more NORMAL-- take on things.

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,

The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,

And bathed every veyne in swich licóur

Of which vertú engendred is the flour;

Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth

Inspired hath in every holt and heeth

The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne

Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,

And smale foweles maken melodye,

That slepen al the nyght with open ye,

So priketh hem Natúre in hir corages,

Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,

And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,

To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;

And specially, from every shires ende

Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,

The hooly blisful martir for to seke,

That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.

April showers ended the drought of March and sweet warm winds are blowing.  Birds are singing.  People want to travel--want to MOVE--winter held us in place too long.  In England in the Middle Ages, that travel was a pilgrimage to Canterbury, to venerate the site of the execution of Thomas a Becket.

We might all feel like traveling in this time of contagion, as I seek to fashion some sort of mask just so I can go purchase a few groceries without being stared at and wondered about.  April might indeed be cruel this year.

I miss baseball.  I miss the joy of daily interaction with students and colleagues.  I miss the rhythms so easily broken or abandoned with this online sort of existence.

As most of you know, I garden.  I have taken the chance to plan and plant my garden, but at the moment it is a time of great angst.  I wait not-so-patiently for seeds to decide, by what magic a seed decides, to break themselves up and shoot themselves golden green and infinitely vulnerable through the soil I have prepared.  I have taken down, with this strange excess of time, some hundreds of pounds of successful but undesired plants (some call them weeds) and prepared the front yard of my house for a revolution.  I have taken account of what works in my soil and what doesn't, where the sun is now and where it will be in May, June, and July--and I have planned accordingly.  And now, I wait.

Waiting is hard, but we are all learning about ourselves in this time, if we are at all paying attention. 

"The Wasteland" started with April being cruel, and, in a way it is.  As Eliot travels through his often inexplicable poem, we can see him grab fragments, we can see him figure out what is important to him.

He ends this way:

These fragments I have shored against my ruins

Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.

Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.

                  Shantih     shantih     shantih

We are grabbing fragments and are securing what is important to us.  Don't worry about Hieronymo--unless you want to look it up--suffice it to say it's one of Eliot's fragments.  Do pay attention to the very end.

The three "Da"s are primal cries to the father.  Da Da Da.  In Eastern thought, they have a deeper meaning.  Charity.  Compassion.  Self-control.

Shantih is one of my favorite words.  It means, "the peace which passes all understanding."  It's what Ishmael found in chapter 87 of Moby-Dick and what all wise people still seek.