there are no eyes in a cactus land

"So tell me about your grandfather, she said. About the cups wrapped in old newspaper that you found in a box under the stairs. Tell me about the coffin ships and how you came from Connemara, really. Tell me about the potatoes.
My great-aunt Louise, he said. When she went mad.
In the old country, she said.
In Connecticut. Rubbed the eyes off potatoes because she thought they were looking at her.
You just made that up.
No, it is true. She went dotty. Quite literally. Ants, flies, mildew, mould - it was the spots that drove her crazy. She thought they were eyes. She thought the world was boiling with eyes..."

Switzerland (fragment)
Taking Pictures
Anne Enright


and then...


lunaparkproductions

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.

The hollow men (fragment)
T.S. Eliot