A penny for the Old Guy

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.

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

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.

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. 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. 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.

T.S. Eliot – The Hollow Men