***Poet's Corner- T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men"- A Poem For Our Hard Times-The World Ends With A Bang, The Bang Of Sea-Changes , Not A Whimper Though
From The Pen Of Peter Paul Markin
Praise be that leftists, including thoughtful Marxists like Leon Trotsky who wrote extensively on the subject and on the proper weight to be placed on such endeavors, take no particular notice of personal preferences in literature (or poetry, music, art, and other cultural tastes) except as such literary figures might use their authority to become active counter-revolutionaries, etc. Otherwise I would be in deep trouble here. T.S. Eliot "spoke" to me with The Hollow Men in high school and still does in these troubled times.
A rejoinder of sorts
Raw-boned men, venom-less, went over the top, thankless, went over the top without a murmur and fell without a murmur. Raw-boned men went where they were told in muddied trenches, begging for another man’s square of earthen muck, without a murmur. Some said it was the times, usually making those pronouncements from London, Paris, Moscow and Berlin far from bloody killing fields, the times and that the earth had gotten too big for raw-boned men, underfed and unwanted, and so they suffused that good French earth, the good German earth, the good Russian earth with their blood. Some say it was the age, mainly speaking in university chapels trying to digest the abrupt change in their own lives, and that of their sons, the age when men (here meaning humankind for the post-modern reader) had built a thing from which they had to run, run double-time from that macro-machine, that earth devouring machine, that non- respecter of humankind. Some said, mainly sentimental old fool, and here is the nub of the matter, that men were no longer are not what they used to be, that the machine has taken a very big chunk out of men, men’s soul. Thus the injured, battle-injured, stress-injured, idea-injured, were forced to while away the tired tiresome days in small cafes, in small cubbyholes, ,in small apartments thinking of times when the earth did not run so very deep with blood, thinking when air could be breathed without congestion, thinking of times when a man could take pride in his voice and what he said, could spite the monster machine, could argue with the saints, could, could, well, you know just could. All the while the broken dark foreboding ally glass strewn all over the ground sent out beacons, and men spoke in hushed whispers to delay the night, to delay the restless sleep that no man can survive, that no woman, wondering about the new man, could fathom. And so those small innocent whispers against Moloch, whispers against the fugitive night, whispers against the ghetto of the mind streets, whispers against the blasted fugitive streets, and reason, It was not a pretty age for raw-boned men, underfed, unwanted, festering sores and all, not a good age to be lost in some eternal rain mucks, lost in some secret devil embrace. Lost, lost, lost.
A man picks up a flag, no, a banner, words un-decipherable to the human eye etched in blood upon it, and shakes it at the world, the callous indifferent world. The foreboding world of raw-boned men sitting in small cafes, small cubbyholes, small apartments muttering to themselves stuck back. They laughed, laughed at the very notion that a man picked up a banner, picked it up and held it aloft and expected, expected if one could believe such a thing given the times, the age, the deformities of men, that anybody in their right minds would follow. See the worldly- wise – the whisperers, hoarse with the dry throats of their own fears, long ago played the percentages, played face down the tarot cards from some carnival madame and decided to pass, pass on that freaking (their word) banner stuff, But strangely, strangely from out in the mist, from out in some dark unlit alley, glass strewn, a man, or was it a woman, it was hard to see with no light, seeing that single un-decipherable banner fashioned a banner out of rags and prepared to shake it at the world, the callous indifferent world, the foreboding world of raw-boned men sitting in small cafes, small cubbyholes, small apartments muttering to themselves.
*******
The Hollow Men
T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Mistah Kurtz—he dead.
A penny for the Old Guy
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.
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
Online text © 1998-2011 Poetry X. All rights reserved.
From The Hollow Men | 1925
From The Hollow Men | 1925
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