Tyler Durden
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
|
Fri Jun-08-07 09:08 AM
Original message |
|
The Hollow Men T. S. Eliot
I
We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless As wind in dry grass Or rats’ feet over broken glass In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour, Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom Remember us—if at all—not as lost Violent souls, but only As the hollow men The stuffed men.
II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams In death’s dream kingdom These do not appear: There, the eyes are Sunlight on a broken column There, is a tree swinging And voices are In the wind’s singing More distant and more solemn Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer In death’s dream kingdom Let me also wear Such deliberate disguises Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves In a field Behaving as the wind behaves No nearer—
Not that final meeting In the twilight kingdom
III
This is the dead land This is cactus land Here the stone images Are raised, here they receive The supplication of a dead man’s hand Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this In death’s other kingdom Waking alone At the hour when we are Trembling with tenderness Lips that would kiss Form prayers to broken stone.
IV
The eyes are not here There are no eyes here In this valley of dying stars In this hollow valley This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places We grope together And avoid speech Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless The eyes reappear As the perpetual star Multifoliate rose Of death’s twilight kingdom The hope only Of empty men.
V
Here we go round the prickly pear Prickly pear prickly pear Here we go round the prickly pear At five o’clock in the morning.
Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception And the creation Between the emotion And the response Falls the Shadow Life is very long
Between the desire And the spasm Between the potency And the existence Between the essence And the descent Falls the Shadow For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is Life is For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.
From The Hollow Men | 1925
|
Demeter
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
|
Fri Jun-08-07 09:09 AM
Response to Original message |
1. Such a Cheerful Man n/t |
zanne
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
|
Fri Jun-08-07 09:13 AM
Response to Reply #1 |
4. Yes, but his poetry is the best of the best. |
|
Beautiful, haunting and so true it almost breaks my heart to read it.
|
Perky
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
|
Fri Jun-08-07 09:10 AM
Response to Original message |
2. as soon as I saw the subject I knew it would be a Hollow Men reference |
|
Edited on Fri Jun-08-07 09:10 AM by Perky
So who are you referring to?
|
Tyler Durden
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
|
Fri Jun-08-07 09:12 AM
Response to Reply #2 |
3. I just read one too many GS8/Paris/slave theme prom/you name it posts. |
|
then thinking about Kef, and Monkeyman, Nostamj, Andy....
Just got to be a little too much.
Maybe like Whitman, the war has become a little too much, and I must go home for a while.
|
Tyler Durden
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
|
Fri Jun-08-07 09:17 AM
Response to Original message |
5. "Atlanta Council Wants Free Speech Zones to RESTRICT Public Protests" |
Tyler Durden
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
|
Fri Jun-08-07 09:19 AM
Response to Original message |
6. "School's prom/graduation ceremony had a slavery theme" |
Tyler Durden
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
|
Fri Jun-08-07 09:21 AM
Response to Original message |
7. "Priests Face Prison for Exposing Torture in Arizona" |
KansDem
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
|
Fri Jun-08-07 09:22 AM
Response to Original message |
8. Good choice, TD. Here's another Eliot excerpt for the times... |
|
Part IV of "The Waste Land"
IV. Death by Water
Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead, Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell And the profit and loss.
A current under sea Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell He passes the stages of his age and youth Entering the whirlpool.
Gentile or Jew O you who turn the wheel and look windward, Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.
|
Tyler Durden
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
|
Fri Jun-08-07 09:27 AM
Response to Reply #8 |
|
For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground And tell sad stories of the death of kings: How some have been deposed; some slain in war; Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed; Some poison'd by their wives; some sleeping kill'd; All murder'd: for within the hollow crown That rounds the mortal temples of a king Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits, Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp, Allowing him a breath, a little scene, To monarchize, be fear'd and kill with looks, Infusing him with self and vain conceit, As if this flesh which walls about our life Were brass impregnable, and humour'd thus Comes at the last and with a little pin Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king!
Richard III
|
Tyler Durden
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
|
Fri Jun-08-07 09:23 AM
Response to Original message |
9. What struck me was this: I could do this all day without stopping. |
|
The madness is overwhelming me. You know, I took enough psychedelics to get the whole party stoned many times over, and I NEVER halucinated ANYTHING as horrifying as where we have gone in this country today...
and it seems like we (and not all of us, mind you) are the only ones who see it.
|
DU
AdBot (1000+ posts) |
Fri Apr 26th 2024, 10:00 AM
Response to Original message |