Roots That Clutch

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, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock)
       — T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land


I’ll have more to say soon … too busy reading a very thick book to write much more today. Happy last day of April!

2 Responses

  1. Poetry, creating shadows
    Poetry, creating shadows within the shadows…..want to seek the never found….trumping all other words in its wake….more than any melting clock day…

  2. As I read this piece by the
    As I read this piece by the great poet T. S Eliot, I can’t keep myself from thinking that it is some kind of a prediction about the state of the world. Climate change, lush forest turning to desert, inhabitable. Polluted water which can no longer support life. But that’s just how I interpreted it anyway.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

What We're Up To ...

Litkicks turned 30 years old in the summer of 2024! We can’t believe it ourselves. We don’t run as many blog posts about books and writers as we used to, but founder Marc Eliot Stein aka Levi Asher is busy running two podcasts. Please check out our latest work!