Dorotea Tanning

Hay días en que todo hace sentido después de este poema.

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

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.

 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 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. 

SIGO SIN CREERLO

Una mujer mato a su bebé: lo metió al microondas. ¿Hay algo peor?
La nota completa aparece aquí:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/09/08/national/main4426004.shtml?source=RSSattr=U.S._4426004

Ahora que me invade la melancolía a cada cinco minutos –vaya, dénme permiso, ha sido un año de muchas pérdidas, flores blancas y vestidos de luto–, no puedo más que regresar a esos poetas favoritos que me hicieron creer que existía algo más: Goethe, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Emily Bronte, Charlotte Bronte, Mary Shelly, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley y John Keats

Ere on my bed my limbs I lay,
It hath not been my use to pray
With moving lips or bended knees ;
But silently, by slow degrees,
My spirit I to Love compose,
In humble trust mine eye-lids close,
With reverential resignation,
No wish conceived, no thought exprest,
Only a sense of supplication ;
A sense o'er all my soul imprest
That I am weak, yet not unblest,
Since in me, round me, every where
Eternal Strength and Wisdom are.

But yester-night I prayed aloud
In anguish and in agony,
Up-starting from the fiendish crowd
Of shapes and thoughts that tortured me :
A lurid light, a trampling throng,
Sense of intolerable wrong,
And whom I scorned, those only strong !
Thirst of revenge, the powerless will
Still baffled, and yet burning still !
Desire with loathing strangely mixed
On wild or hateful objects fixed.
Fantastic passions ! maddening brawl !
And shame and terror over all !
Deeds to be hid which were not hid,
Which all confused I could not know
Whether I suffered, or I did :
For all seemed guilt, remorse or woe,
My own or others still the same
Life-stifling fear, soul-stifling shame.

So two nights passed : the night's dismay
Saddened and stunned the coming day.
Sleep, the wide blessing, seemed to me
Distemper's worst calamity.
The third night, when my own loud scream
Had waked me from the fiendish dream,
O'ercome with sufferings strange and wild,
I wept as I had been a child ;
And having thus by tears subdued
My anguish to a milder mood,
Such punishments, I said, were due
To natures deepliest stained with sin,--
For aye entempesting anew
The unfathomable hell within,
The horror of their deeds to view,
To know and loathe, yet wish and do !
Such griefs with such men well agree,
But wherefore, wherefore fall on me ?
To be beloved is all I need,
And whom I love, I love indeed.
–Coleridge

Ya valió fue lo único que pasó por mi cabeza cuando, tras una rica cena, un grupo de compañeros periodistas y yo nos reunimos en una peña en Mérida. Alrededor de las 11:40 dos compañeros llegaron con caras casi trasparentes, pues en el taxi que tomaron el conductor les informó que a partir de las 12:00 de la noche habría tiroteos a civiles. Hace mucho que no sentía tantísimo miedo, fue de esas muy contadas ocasiones en las que puedes sentir perfectamente cómo la adrenalina se desprende de diversos órganos y viaja por todo el torrente sanguíneo para que tu cuerpo entre en un estado que sólo puedo describir como de shock eléctrico. En fin, alrededor de las 12:10 casi se me sale el corazón cuando un grupo de meseros incurrió en cantar las mañanitas a la mesa con todo y aplausos, tronado de globos y demás sonidos tipo balazo para hacer notar a la festejada. No fue una mala velada, pero sí la más angustiante de mi cortita existencia. Si eso es el miedo y así estamos condenados a vivir por la reinante y creciente inseguridad, creo que prefiero mudarme de país... pero como me autoprometí a no hacer aspavientos respecto a todos estos problemas, basta con decir que no me gustó esta horrenda sensación de pánico que, además de drenarme toda la energía, no dejarme dormir bien y sacarme algunas canas extra, estoy segura es en parte respondable por el dolor de panza tan fuerte que me persigue desde ayer en la noche.