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),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

The muse lies like a hollow shell wasted by consumption. It rises feebly for a moment, lifts its head, looks around, then is seized by a wracking cough and falls again in terminal weakness. Ironically, so did two young branches of my ancient family tree pass on–their graves lie a few miles down the road, under autumn leaves in the yard of the abandoned church. Plucked away in the flower of youth. I know nothing about them. Perhaps my creative side comes to the same pass.

One wonders where a muse goes to die. What causes it to starve, when adversity so often makes it thrive and grasp at defiant expression?

I’ve never known. It’s a ghost anyway. Comes and goes with a shudder and a knocking in the night, like now, for instance.

I think this emptiness is simply the all-encompassing force of dying things. I’ve gotten old on the inside, and where I once found myself invigorated with appropriately angst-filled wistfulness by the chill winds, I am now merely tired. My hair is turning prematurely grey.

Songs used to come in this season. The colours of land and sky used to blend with the colours of music, and a strange overlapping of unseen world with seen world would take place. A Samhain of song. But, like that legendary and macabre remembrance of an ancient time of death…nothingness takes over.

I am burnt out like a bone-fire. Sacrificed needlessly on some godless altar, or so I assume, for here’s the truth that should set me free: My yoke is easy, and My burden is light. So, then, what am I doing in tatters?

This is the waste land. Wasted time, wasted energy. Why do I spend money for what is not bread, and wages for what doesn’t satisfy?

Ah. Well. Because it’s a pleasure, for a season. A wild dance like a dervish spinning faster and faster, conjuring up dreams. So goes the theory. But the muse doesn’t respond so well to the dervish dance. The wheeling of time only heightens her fever till she’s a mumbling, deluded wreck with nothing coherent to say.

It’s somewhere at this point that the naysayers of her disease–dear readers, listeners, friends, creative egos in co-conspiracy–pop in with flowers and well-wishes. Ah, what health she looks in, with that flush to her face and the brightness of her eyes. She can’t die. It would mean dreams die, and the conspiracy must cover up that very real potentiality. So listen to her dulcet murmurs, weaving a story where all’s well that ends well. If she isn’t well, she’s on her way to it, sure enough.

So it seems, because a muse is a powerful creature, able to disguise to some extent her wasting away. She knows illusion. It’s her stock in trade.

Meanwhile, every word is painful, straining her lungs, contorting her deep within, though she hides it. She may have a sudden burst of energy, but heaven help us if it’s the death-rush that sometimes floods the veins before final expiry.

And so, I gently lay the muse to sleep. What branches grow out of this stony rubbish? I cannot say or guess. I know only a heap of broken images, where the sun beats down in a final onslaught of warmth while the wind chills the fields. The day is not long or strong enough to warm the paling skies. The stars are coming into their rule, against all that great fiery orb’s efforts to reach a wasting land leaning away from the life-giving touch.

The far north reaches down to me from its remote, icy stillness, spreading its fingers like the grave’s grasp. And with it, silence.

—

Poetry excerpt from ‘The Burial of the Dead,’ from The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot