***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

 

 

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for poet T.S. Eliot's The Hollow Men.

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

 

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.

 

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From The Hollow Men | 1925