The Hollow Men

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 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.