Brooklynn Lindsey

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 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.