Episode 29 “THE HOLLOW MEN” - TS Eliot reads his poem #NaPodPoMo READING POETRY

You hear Paul O’Mahony introduce TS Eliot reading “The Hollow Men”——————-THE HOLLOW MEN 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 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 KingdomBetween the conception  And the creation Between the emotion  And the response  Falls the Shadow                                   Life is very longBetween the desire  And the spasm  Between the potency  And the existence  Between the essence  And the descent  Falls the Shadow                                   For Thine is the KingdomFor 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———————-Listen to the full series at https://napodpomo.org/napodpomo-2025-mega-feed/ Follow me on Spotify, Audioboom, and Apple Podcasts