The Strange Love Song of T. S. Eliot

At twenty-six, I was inexperienced; 
Still, I knew much about love 
In the waste land, reasoning, 
It's not important when you start 
Practicing, rather when you start searching; 
And I committed myself to finding 
It before others even knew it existed, 'breeding 

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing' 
My thoughts, my longings, my love 
For something that didn't need naming 
In the misty mornings, recognizing 
The dew on the petal, alive yet sleepy; 
I was a dreamer, I admit, thinking, 
April is the cruelest month, flying 

Thoughts about some distant teaching, 
Seeing invisible in the visible, loving 
Wild thoughts making love, searching 
To find it; love was a secret hard to decode— 
Sacred to me.
 Students talking 
Of business, Dante and Michelangelo; 
That was important, yet not so important 

In the land where death died long ago, blooming 
Roses taught me a lesson, doing 
My search for me, wakening 
The land where human measures are important 
Yet not so important; so I stayed, deserving 
A degree from real roses, forgetting 
The Ph.
D.
 at Harvard, which for me was waiting 

Of course it was not about Michelangelo, 
But does it really matter? I saw paintings 
And landscapes, dead lands and lands 
Alive, knowing it's more important 
To feel than to know.
 I had it all in my head; 
And I stayed where dreaming 
Was more important than competing 

In the land where the women come and go, talking 
Of Sara Bernhardt and Coco Chanel in the Sistine Chapel 
And men come and go, talking 
Of wars, children come and go, talking 
Of chocolate, and they all go, leaving 
Not much to think about exchanging 
Experiences with feelings, transforming 

Experiences into meanings, mixing 
Thoughts about love evaporating 
Into 'the yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window panes, 
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window panes.
' 
And in the end I understood April, learning 
That April seemed cruel only in the dead land, knowing 
That every month is equally paradisiacal and hellish, 

Equally paradoxical.
 

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