Mistah Kurz - he dead.
A penny for the Old Guy!

I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpieces filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rat's feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar.

Shape without form, shade without color,
Paralyzed 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 the 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 kingdom.
In the 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 with a whimper

(The Hollow Men - TS Eliot)

Diary 2020

Dark days of Brexit

This pretty much sums it up: posted by a contributor on CIX

>>I did "vote with my heart"

Me too - and there was plenty of positive stuff to vote for, as well as voting against the succession of variously appalling and disgusting people who stood up to lie about the EU.

Like the idea that one is stronger as a member of a community than as an outsider. Like the commitment to peace in Europe and elsewhere. Like the commitment to help refugees rather than just raise the barriers. Like the determination to improve things for future generations. Like the determination to remove barriers (not just borders) to movement, progress, cooperation, friendship, and petty much anything else you can think of within Europe. The idea of looking outward rather than inward. The idea that a community stands up for all its members, including the weaker ones. The idea of cooperation rather than competition to reach wider goals.

Whatever the problems and failings of the EU, it is ultimately about a series of positive goals, many of which it is well on its way to fulfilling. Brexit - despite the protestations of its wilder proponents - was always an essentially negative project denying half a century of real and steadyvprogress in favour of a complete leap in the dark.

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