Almost a hundred years
Yet the poem remains intractable
A chiaroscuro for the poet
For us the Holy Grail
Over intellectualism lead us astray
Let us see it the way the poet did—
A vast stretch of Waste Land
A string of paradoxes
A hyacinth girl and the typist home
Tiresias and Madame Sosostris
Two drowned Phoenicians sailors
One redeemed, the other condemned
The famous allusions and thunder
Are sorts of hedging
To keep the Dog at bay
Lest he tear it up to pieces
