Poetry is not my cup of tea. I read this because of 'The Sinner's season 3 where the following lines were mentioned a number of times-

"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. "

I need to understand this poem more deeply. ( )

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.

Certain phrases are always echoing in my mind, and this is one of them. Whatever else may be said of my useless high school years, they got the meditations of one T.S. Eliot into my head. In high school, I loved to pick Eliot's poems apart, running every allusion back down to unlock the 'true' meaning. Rereading this for a group read, I am gratified to find that the imagery itself arrests me now in a way it has never done before. (Once I have devoured this again for the first time, it gets a proper review.)

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Four months later, here is the proper review. Only it is impossible for me to really review this poem, because it is one of my all time favorites. Hard to review the things that made me what I am. So here is more of an experience of it, an appreciation of the imagery, if you will. (Eliot would hate this for annotation and anachronism, but that's what you get for being a poet who stands the test of time.)

I strongly suggest you read the poem yourself first before proceeding to the images I am about to attach to it. It is quite readily available online (here, for instance).

Ready?

Here we go.
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Mistah Kurtz-he dead
A penny for the Old Guy

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.

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

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.

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.

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.


That last image is the Pale Blue Dot photo of Earth taken by Voyager 1, a composite photo of the solar system taken approximately 4 billion miles away. Lousy image, but the concept was too good to pass up.

Full review finished 6/17/16 ( )