edgard-ab

[edgard-ab]

up + down

[edgard-ab]

[edgard-ab]

Jan Brueghel - THETIS VE PELEUS'UN GÖRKEMLI BIR KALE PARKINDA DÜĞÜNÜ (detail)

[edgard-ab]

T.S. Eliot -  The Hollow Men 

 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.

[edgard-ab]

Alex Dordoy (British, 1985), Weather Channel (Dawn), 2021. Acrylic on canvas, 200 x 140 cm.