April is the cruellest month, breeding

lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

memory and desire, stirring

dull roots with spring rain . . . .

from The Waste Land by TS Eliot (1922)

Few poems have such arresting opening verses as TS Eliot's best known work, 'The Waste Land'. But then may be it is just that some terrible things in the world take place in April.

As the illegal unilateral aggression of the Bush-Blair invasion of Iraq enters the third week, we have yet to be presented with the scale of carnage, death and destruction that would conjure up images of a 'waste land'.

But April will likely prove to be the 'cruellest month' for Iraqi civilians caught between a ruthless dictatorship and a hyperpower bent o­n a new form of colonisation of the Middle East.