Because I still don't have a damn thing to say...

...and I am not interested in wasting my time or yours with an entry that serves no purpose, I thought I'd throw one of my favorite poems at you. You've probably either heard or read parts of it before. There are five parts, I'm only including the fifth, my favorite, and the section I always taught to my students. Eliot is THE Modern poet...the sense of loss, of shock, of finding out everything you were expected to trust was completely untrustworthy (via the first world war), it permeates his work. It's painful, sad, obtuse, and beautiful. The combination of nonsense (a misquoted child's nursery rhyme), with the lord's prayer, with the poem...well, the juxtaposition is certainly no accident.

Enjoy.

The Hollow Men, part V, T.S. Eliot

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.