Yesterday, a number of our fellows convened to comment on and exchange insights and relevant facts on the de-globalization of the global economy, so inconsistent with the vision and optimism which were present at the 1986 foundation of the Caux Round Table.
After the discussion, I was reminded of two poems written in the 1920s, after World War I had disrupted the world order with a new one – dark and threatening – beginning to arise in its place.
The two poems are:
“The Hollow Men” by T.S. Eliot
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 …
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 …
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow …
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
“Once By The Pacific” by Robert Frost
The shattered water made a misty din.
Great waves looked over others coming in,
And thought of doing something to the shore
That water never did to land before.
The clouds were low and hairy in the skies,
Like locks blown forward in the gleam of eyes.
You could not tell, and yet it looked as if
The shore was lucky in being backed by cliff,
The cliff in being backed by continent;
It looked as if a night of dark intent
Was coming, and not only a night, an age.
Someone had better be prepared for rage.
There would be more than ocean-water broken
Before God’s last Put out the light was spoken.