T.S. Eliot’s The Hollow Men has been one of my favorite poems since high school (along with Langston Hughes’ Harlem – What happens to a dream deferred?)

Today here are prickly pear bits from T.S. Eliot’s poetry to contemplate…

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion…

 “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.”

T.S. Eliot, from The Hollow Men (1925)

grace, peace & prickly pear poetry

Virginia : )