T.S. Eliot was Wrong GeorgeFish

April is the cruelest month… (opening line of T.S. Eliot’s poem,“The Waste Land” - 1922)

But T.S. Eliot was wrong, very wrong, though picturesque, vivid, in his language:

April is not the cruelest month

January is.

January is cold, blustery, gets dark early in the evening, and remains dark till late in the morning.

January lacks all the gaiety of December (even if that gaiety is ofttimes forced, excessively commercial, even crass and artificial, and seems fueled solely by ethyl alcohol!); and yes, January lacks the anticipatory joy of late February, when spring is just around the seasonal corner.

January is the essence of bitter, cruel winter the time of illness, of flu, of brutal wind and bone-chilling cold: the month we cannot wait for to end, to finally be over with. But, alas! it is one of the longest months of the year, and seems so much longer than its actual thirty-one days!

George Fish is a self-described Punk Rock Poet and extensively published prose writer who lives in Indianapolis. His poetry has been previously published in Tipton Poetry Journal, Flying Island, the literary anthology And Then, the socialist website New Politics, Poems 4 Palestine, and elsewhere. He may be reached at georgefish666@yahoo.com.