SHAM’D WOMEN ((HOLLOW MEN))
I
We, the loud women
We, the sham'd women;
Leaning together
Headpiece dripping it's frown, alas!
His hollow voice, as
We howl in unison, crass-
Frail and meaningless
The wind has gathered amass!
Foot falling over broken glass
Guzzles wine in the cellar
Shape without form, struck without armour,
Unforgiving force, a gesture in commotion;
His eyes have crossed
Our direct eyes bring a dead mans freedom
Remember him—once was tall—now lost
Violent prowling, but only
As him; hollow man
Stuffed belly man
Tall man
II
Tongues I dare not meet in dreams
In sleep's dreaming kingdom
Never to appear:
Her! Her eyes are
Reflected on the broken column
Greek to the man swinging
Our voices are
In the wind, singing
More distant and more solemn
To cradle his fading star.
Let me be no nearer
Death's dream clear
Man tears, will wear
With deliberate guise
Rat's toe, dead-like bird taking place of slave
We women lie in field
Behaving as teal tears behave
She, the wind, the disappearer—
Clandestine meeting
In our, twilight field
III
This is dead land
This is cactus land
Here- shadows of stone images
Raised here we receive
The supplication of created man's hand
Under jaded, faded kingdom.
Like his untimely fall
Into death's bottomless pit
Woke in field
At the hour he looks at sky, we are
Trembling with hopelessness
Fissured tongue grab at his tonsils
Forms broken stonehenge to stones
IV
The mouths are not here
There are no words here
In the valley of dead men and charred kings
In this bottomless chasm
Through this broken jaw of a child
His (and I), the meeting places where
He groped women, us women together
Roped mighty women,
unfinished creations
Immeasurable, on top the kingdom of timid deterioration man
Lipless, unless:
His eyes will repair
As the parable speaks to his charred
Multiplicity; his mush, his self string
he is left for death's twilight field
His hope was only
Of lifeless tendons.
V
Here we go round the hole in ground,
Hole in ground, hole in ground
Here we go round a sulphuric bath
At five o'clock in the morning
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
The cruelty
Falls in the Tallman
For Thine in lone self takes refuge
Between the conception
And the creation
Between his begin, his end
Women respond to Tallman
Trips into sulphuric bath
Life is very long
Between beginnings
Quickening
And spasms, convulsions
Between endings
Between conception to depth
Between the drama of moral history
And the descent
Falling, the Shadow
For Thine in lone self takes refuge
For Thine is the,
For Twitch is the,
For his end 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 he; with that was she, and them; unanimous woman-
Tall man tumbled in formless realm,
Not with a bang, but a whimper