If I had to create a poem to describe these final days of Pluto in Sagittarius; with Chiron, Neptune and the lunar North Node conjunct in the middle of Aquarius; Uranus and Saturn at opposition; and the personal planets all cozied up in Libra, including Mercury getting ready to do its fall retrograde, this would be it.
You'll probaby think I'm nuts, but I find reading this poem a joyful experience. It has been such a long road (and as another early 20th century poet said, we have miles to go before we sleep), and in this poem I find some sort of validation and comfort.
P. S. If you don't understand the "astrologese", don't worry about it ... just read the poem ;). There'll be time enough to talk about the cosmos later.
- The Hollow Men
- Mistah Kurtz—he dead.
A penny for the Old Guy
- 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
- We are the stuffed men
- 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.
- With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
- 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.
- In death’s dream kingdom
- 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—
- In death’s dream kingdom
- 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.
- This is cactus land
- 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.
- In death’s other kingdom
- 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
- There are no eyes here
- In this last of meeting places
- We grope together
- And avoid speech
- Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
- We grope together
- Sightless, unless
- The eyes reappear
- As the perpetual star
- Multifoliate rose
- Of death’s twilight kingdom
- The hope only
- Of empty men.
- The eyes reappear
- 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.
- Prickly pear prickly pear
- Between the idea
- And the reality
- Between the motion
- And the act
- Falls the Shadow
- For Thine is the Kingdom
- And the reality
- Between the conception
- And the creation
- Between the emotion
- And the response
- Falls the Shadow
- Life is very long
- And the creation
- 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
- And the spasm
- For Thine is
- Life is
- For Thine is the
- Life is
- 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.
- This is the way the world ends
-- T. S. Eliot
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