Eliot’s
‘Wasteland’
A state of
mind
For this
modern man
When
thoughts lead me down a labyrinth
When
emotions set sail on dark course
Then I am in
the Wasteland
Chemically
and neuronally
So that the
‘Presence of God’
Has left my side
(I might
have been a child in ‘His’ garden)
Here in the
Wasteland
Cogs and spring
lie at my feet
Remnants of
that which unwove a rainbow
Nailed up here
and there
Written on
planks of wood
Are laws and
statutes
Decreed from
On High
(The ivory
tower or the mountain)
You may
peruse them at your leisure
(But expect
no answers here
To slake
your weary thirst)
‘I myself am
Heaven and Hell’
Said the
Sufi
(I say that
Heaven is to think no more of Hell
And Hell is
to think always of Heaven)
In the wasteland
Great
millwheels turn
Sluiced
through
By many a
stream
Of foetid,
brackish water
Ceaselessly
turning
Yet yielding
no wheat
As I walk
I perceive
great scars
Riven ‘cross
the ground
(The divided
self)
Some are so
wide
That you
could be lost in them
(Though
might a healing balm one day be dropped
From Heaven
to seal the breach?)
The Anima is
seen through a mirror
Inflected in
a hundred guises
(Where she
walks
The dry
shrubs burst into flame)
Here is a
door which has no lock
And may admit
no key
You try to
peer over the horizon
For sight of
the promised land
But the Wasteland
borders nothing
And in
walking you get nowhere