T.S. Eliot

I can't ignore the impact "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" has had on my life -- how it helped me through college, how it crept into my photography before I even realized it, how lines from that poem often pass through my mind. The most poignant passage for me being this:

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—	55
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?	60
And how should I presume?

While I still turn to "Prufrock" with fondness, another Eliot poem is quietly usurping its place. "The Waste Land." What else? This passage is one that I'm currently gnawing on:

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,	20
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,	25
(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.

While I don't understand everything you have written my dear Thomas Stearns, thank you for beautiful, meaningful things.