“Son of man”: Ezekiel

Abstract

In its first eighteen lines, The Waste Land zooms through the seasons: the bulbs and roots of springtime are followed by coffee in the summer and sledding in the mountains. After this move through the calendar year, lines 19–42 traverse the geography of fertility—from desert to garden. The poem moves from a landscape where “roots that clutch” hang on for dear life in a heap of “stony rubbish” (WL 19, 20), then travels from that scene of dead trees and dry rocks to a hyacinth garden.