April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

Winter kept us warm, covering

Earth in forgetful snow, feeding

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47311/the-waste-land

“memory and desire, stirring“ hit the sentiments of the presence.

Do you know what I was, how I lived? You know

what despair is; then

winter should have meaning for you.

I did not expect to survive,

earth suppressing me. I didn't expect

to waken again, to feel

in damp earth my body

able to respond again, remembering

after so long how to open again

in the cold light

of earliest spring—

afraid, yes, but among you again

crying

So that was the season of light. Stooping always over it, like a schoolmaster trying to catch me out in an act of enjoyment, was the season of darkness.

I can no longer pretend that the winter is fine. I have tried to tell myself that the country is not dead, but resting and regrouping, stroking the inchoate life inside it, and that that's what is