Help on the poem

Dear Rini, Yeah, Rini, I went through the poem that day itself and like you, I have been trying to understand the poem. I took down a few notes for posting later. Since you were also searching, I am posting it now. I would say that, based on my experiences, The Waste Land is the poetic equivalent of Eco's Foucault's Pendulum. As a poem, it references a wide range of works spread across varying subjects from philosophy to mythology. It is an excellent example in semiotics.

The basic method used in The Waste Land may be described as the application of the principle of complexity. The poet works in terms of surface parallelisms which in reality make ironical contrasts, and in terms of surface contrasts which in reality constitute parallelisms. - Cleanth Brooks

Since you wanted a paraphase to the poem, here is the site I was referring to when reading the poem. As said earlier, I was reading a lot about semiotics the day you posted the link to the poem. Was it a coincidence that the poem was a real life example of semiotics. I don't know. If you are wondering what semiotics means, here is a list of definitions from Google. T.S. Eliot was called one of the great poets of the 20^th century. I hope you remember the following part of a poem of his.

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

He wrote an entire book about cats. The poem was modified into a musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber and it became a wonderful success. Recently, it was shown in TV.