The poem begins with a dedication to the poet Ezra Pound, whom Eliot deems here "the better craftsman." This praise is actually an allusion to Dante's Divine Comedy, the famous 14th-century poem about the poet's epic journey through purgatory, hell, and paradise. In this earlier poem, Dante refers to the poet Arnault Daniel, whom he meets in Hell, using the same compliment. Pound helped edit "The Waste Land," so on one level this is simply an expression of gratitude on Eliot's part. However, it also places the poem within an epic context, suggesting it, too, may be a story of heaven, hell, and humanity itself. The first section is then ominously titled "The Burial of the Dead," which suggests the dark tale to come.
Finally, readers get to the actual first line of the poem. The opening of "The Waste Land" is one of the most well-known lines in poetry, and for good reason. An unknown speaker begins by making an unusual assertion: "April is the cruellest month."
Given that April is usually associated with the return of spring, this assertion is startling, but the speaker goes on to explain why it feels that way. The lilacs are blooming out of the "dead land"—the lifeless winter soil—"mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain." This language can all be read metaphorically. In other words, the return of spring has brought back painful memories for the speaker, including memories that have to do with "desire," or love. Though spring is usually a welcome event, in the speaker's case, these "dull roots" might have been better left untouched by the change in seasons. That is, the speaker wishes those memories and feelings could remain distant and dull, buried beneath the ground.
That's why, in the next line, the speaker wishes it were still winter, when the land was covered in "forgetful snow," which kept all this pain at bay (metaphorically keeping the speaker "warm" in a blanket of denial and ignorance). Winter may have meant living "a little life with dried tubers"—in other words, settling for emotions gone cold and numb like a plant bulb beneath the soil in winter—but that still felt "warm" compared to the cruelty of spring, when the speaker must confront no longer dormant "memory and desire." The alliteration of "winter" and "warm" reflects the connection between these concepts in the speaker's mind.
This section is overflowing with alliteration and consonance, in fact. Notice the intensity of /l/, /m/, /d/, /f/, /k/, /s/, /r/, /t/, /p/, and /ng/ sounds:
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
A little life with dried tubers.
The sounds of the poem are inescapable and overwhelming, perhaps reflecting the intense blossoming of life (and memory/desire) that accompanies the spring. In the absence of meter or rhyme (the poem is written in free verse), these shared sounds add a sense of lyricism and continuity to the poem.
At the same time, the poem's use of enjambment in nearly every line makes things seem decidedly off-kilter. Each line, apart from lines 4 and 7, ends on an incomplete thought, urging readers on to the next in order to fully understand what's going on. This captures the unsettled mindset of the speaker, so that the very form of the poem mirrors what the speaker has to say. It also establishes one of the poem's primary concerns: that the traditional forms of art that were celebrated in the past are no longer meaningful in the modern age.
Indeed, these lines introduce a number of the poem's major themes. The brokenness and alienation of modern life are central to "The Waste Land," and are introduced here via the speaker's numbness and resistance to revisiting memories of a better time. The metaphors of spring and winter hint at the poem's ideas surrounding death (symbolized by winter) and rebirth (symbolized by spring); the section title here of course mentions death directly. The mention of "desire" introduces the undercurrent of sex, love, lust, and impotence that flows throughout the poem. And, of course, the mention of "memory" explicitly invokes the past, and lays the foundation for the poem's mournful treatment of memory and the past.