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.
YESSSSSSSSSS.
(there's the most amazing clothing shop in that street it's so awesome)
a.
As they burst through the venous soil,
Fresh blooms, sickly red and iris-blue, and
Aureated baby-blooms
in the sweet odour in the awakening
Of nature come the dancing maidens of spring-
The rites of May.
In their white dresses, hair-down soaked in dew,
Sugared with pollen, polluted with joy.
b.
Heat-imbued summer day, the sky a painter’s
Brush sweating with red and gold, the
Sweaty hand on the breast, the drunken laughter
Of a drifting sunset, of emotions in wax,
Ambered moments. Leaves in green-golden light,
Sickly bejewelled, adorned in your embrace.
Too heavy, breathing you, I plunge my lungs.
c.
May they come, the souls of cold, the hands of
Ghosts, the rotten apples of the sated trunks
The burnt cheeks, the leaves discolouring
On bodies. Lying. And we long, we part.
The season of the sickly wine, the drunken
Fever and the breathless dances under
Autumn’s frenzied star-filled-skies.
d.
Slower. Time syrupates and tastes of honey
und eiskristallener Luft.
The ways are three-fold, each turn a world,
Telling tales of blood-thirsty murder and
Star-crossed lovers in the cold. crave.
The fire still warm with white ash,
My Fingers glyphed with blue ink.
Flesh devours flesh and blood stains blood.
Red
Rose Petals: he picks them up as he walks down the alleyway, counting with his fingers, one, two, three. The trees are haggard hands stretching out in the grey ripples of sky, the leaves are tiny corpses, curled inwards, as if hiding.
His Mouth: moving, constantly. Pulling and sometimes biting. Songs of the twilight, the gods smiling. His words are hidden, their meanings cut open like corpses of the autopsy. They move inside his body, parasites of knowledge.
Fire: When they burn the women, he sometime cries. It is forbidden.
So they say.
Blood: When he touched the thorn, like a lover touches the body, it foraminated his skin. There was no pain, no agony. Only a tiny drop of blood, silhouetted against his skin. This, he thinks, is beauty.
Heart: Hearts do break. So they say. It is a lie: hearts are not meant to be broken. Hearts are meant to be cut, sliced. If so, it will make him beautiful.
Blue
Ring: It is the only thing that remains. Small, broken, missing. Dangling on a string, like the man they hung on the trees when the scaffolds were already taken.
Question: “Tell me, was it an accident?”
Five: Five is blue, adding to ten. Adding to hundred. Adding to infinity. Finally, him.
Water: Water is harder like the slap of a hand, almost like a word, hissed and uttered in disgust. Sometimes, he mistakes water for air and breathes deeply, almost as if afraid of choking. Does that mean that he thinks, deep inside, that drowning is the better option? After all, we are water, 80%. He remembers. The percentage of humanity.
Sky: They say it is where the heavens are. He knows better, though. There are only stars, minuscule lights in nothingness, a vacuum sometimes nerved by light, travelling through space. Never changing, always constant.
Dreams: He defies gravity, raising up to the gods. Not thinking, merely feeling.
Green
Hiding: He pierces the bushes, the grassland. When they laugh, the green chokes the laughter before it can reach him. And it does not hurt. The grass is warm, like the hand of a mother he has never known. The earth can soak up everything.
Bottle: It breaks and when he hears the glass reaching the floor, scattering, it sounds like a blow. The glass traces like pain against his finger.
Leaves: The window is overgrown, hidden beneath masses of ivy, filtering the sky until it wavers in the air like a threadbare curtain. The room seems to be underwater, the twigs clutching the frames, the leaves scratching in the wind, moving the greenlight until it blazes shadows in the wall. This is peace.
Home: The meadow, patches of flowers, arranged without meaning, the glyphs of god only he can read. The room full of light that envelopes him when he is, he is. The walls, red-brown bricks embraced by their dead bodies, shrivelled and grey (though still green). This is a place of memory. He was not born here.
Book: it is enclosed in green, some fragments missing. Wisdom and Knowledge make it burst, almost. When he touches its pages, it comes alive. It wouldn’t surprise him if it would start moving someday. Maybe it will.
White
Skin: Like frozen shame, exposed over flesh, bone, thought. Flawed in its flawlessness. Your stigma remain, bitten into your flesh, marks of fear and silence.
Snow: They say it is a symbol of innocence. He only sees death. That doesn’t mean that is not beautiful because it is, it is, it is. When he lies down, it swallows him as a whole, down. He sleeps in the throat of the monster and he smiles. Melting, he and the snow are one entity. Cold, Deadly, Motionless.
Emotion: Emotion is not stained, it is pure. Hate is as pure as Love. Pure translates: to be stained.
Destiny: “is what brought you to me. Namely: something that is to happen or has happened to a particular person or thing; lot or fortune, the predetermined, usually inevitable or irresistible, course of events, the power or agency that determines the course of events,(initial capital letter) this power personified or represented as a goddess, the Destinies, the Fates. Did the Fates determine that you did what you did, are you not to blame, why did it happen, why, was it inevitable that I had to, why did you have to be irresistible, why?”
Shrink: He is getting smaller, still, like he is pressed between to covers. Duty and Desire. Disembodying by the minute. In-folding.
Black
Fear: of what? Breathing, almost as if afraid of choking.
His Eyes: he is seeing, like he always does. His eyes mirror the world, mutate it from good to bad and backwards again. What does he see? “Life and Death.” Is it the same? “No. Yes. Maybe.” It is the stare of a fish, dead, void of emotion.
Sometimes he cried. It is forbidden. So they said.
Stain: Emotion does stain so easily. You know.
Ash: He touches the ash and it is still warm, eaten by the fire. He is burning, burning. Who will touch his ash?
Night: “When you came to me, the night was darker. The stars ceased to shine, as if you impeded their light. Or maybe you shone too brightly. It didn’t matter. I heard the waves of my consciousness crash against your body. So close, so close, and so afraid. My thoughts imploding, trembling, shivering. I was there, with you, and so afraid.”
Darkness: i.e. the absence of light. This is what he fears.
Twilight
Vestige: What about the remaining 20%?
Death: Death is the permanent end of the life of a biological organism. Death may refer to the end of life as either an event or condition. Many factors can cause or contribute to an organism's death, including predation, disease, habitat destruction, senescence, malnutrition and accidents. Existence Without does not equal Un-existence. Nothingness. This is what he does not fear. Words: So many, too many. Utterances are redundant, he would not understand. He has learnt them all, tongue tipping against teeth, syllables. Still, he cannot describe what it is. It, that is making him do these things, it, that parasitic existence in his mind that is slowly evaporating all logical processes. Mind: Priced treasure. Cherished. Adored. Feared. The reason why he is still alive. One single sentence. He cannot remember it. His mind gave birth to his existence. His mind, gravid with thought. Too much of it. Impregnated, a miscarriage. Light: Nothing else is constant, only Light. (The visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, corresponding to electromagnetic waves ranging in wavelength from approximately 3·9 × 10−7 m (violet) to 7·8 × 10−7 m (red) (corresponding frequencies 7·7 × 1014 Hz and 3·8 × 1014 Hz, respectively). Different wavelengths of light are perceived by humans as different colours.) He can say it by heart. But does it matter. His mouth: darkness. His heart: darkness. His soul: darkness. He knows, he knows. But Light makes the darkness even more beautiful. End: There is no darkness, no white blazing light. There is only a substructure of colours, separate though intertwined, almost palpable. white ash, falling from the sky. Black flames from down down below. And even after this postmortem abacination, almost blind, he can see his eyes as they truly are: nor good nor bad but a twilight of vitiosity and holyness.
