McGahey's McMusings: Philadelphia in April Revisited

April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

(T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land [1922])

Some years ago I posted a pictorial homage to Philadelphia in the glorious month of April. My hometown may have overly humid summers and―take your pick―either too cold or, as I prefer, not cold and snowy enough winters, but fall and spring, particularly October through the first half of November and April through the first half of May, can be picture perfect, with cool temperatures and marvelous colors. Even the famous April showers are often overshadowed by many fine days with azure skies and few clouds. After a couple of years in which old man winter overstayed his welcome and summer rushed in too quickly, resulting in disappointingly brief springs, this year has thankfully failed to disappoint.

Of course, the great Eliot wasn't speaking of Aprils like that of last year when he spoke of it being the "cruellest month." One suspects most people would consider it "cruel" if overly cold and rainy, dampening the promise echoed more than 600 years ago by Geoffrey Chaucer in the Prologue to his Canterbury Tales:

When in April the sweet showers fall

That pierce March's draught to the root and all

And bathed every vein in liquor that has power

To generate therein and sire the flower

No. Eliot was calling it cruel precisely because it "breed(s) lilacs out of the dead land. Then again, Philadelphia isn't post-Great War London, and most of us, even those, like I, whose temperament is laced with melancholy, aren't despondent enough to fixate on our city's degeneracy and moral/cultural decay. Instead of longing for winter's snows to remain so as to keep memory at bay and mute the contrast between one's despair and nature's rebirth, most of us welcome with open arms the promise of new life that spring, at its best, represents. And this is one of the two seasons of the year that indeed shows Philadelphia at its best. I leave with with a number of photographs I took this April in the city, as well as a number from previous years.