The Waste Land*

1. The Burial of the Dead

piercing pain and numbness

crossroads

hope/despair

joy/grief

dichotomies between feelings and

extremes of being

and

the narrowing of possibilities to

one

'In the mountains, there you feel free,'

you would frighten others with your anguish and your heart howls

'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'

and we are all the same.