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The copper lady – looking back and into the future with T.S. Eliot - poetry defines crossroads for politics
The visit of Merkel to Washington has been called by observers as nothing exceptional safe that the chemistry between her und President Bush seems to work again positive. Given the strains in American-German relationships over the past seven years mainly due to Schroeder’s position against the Iraq war, any improvement in the relationship is very easy provided the new chancellor understands better than her predecessor to strike the right tone and show willingness of compliance wherever desired by the power holders in Washington. And so with regards to the new challenge of Iran, it was easy for Merkel to stand shoulder on shoulder in order to demonstrate that the Western World stands united.
A real assessment of the visit’s concrete results might be not possible at such an early stage but then there is the poet’s insight which might guide anyone in what to expect of developments to come.
- Hatto Fischer
The Copper Lady
(An application of T.S. Eliot’s poem The Hollow Men)
She is the copper lady
We are the stuffed men
Bending together
Headpiece filled with war. Alas!
Her dried voice,
does not even whisper defiance
Is quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry oil wells
Or broken men without toil
In our damp cellar
Shapeless, formless and colourless,
Paralysed by American forces;
That cross the ocean conducted by copper,
With diverted 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.
Led by the copper lady,
The second lady
II
She dare not meet Bush with our dreams
In death's dream kingdom
What does she fear:
Too afraid to criticise
Whilst eyes of broken men,
Never see the sunlight glitter on Guantanamo Bay
Her copper wires are vibrating,
As she leads America’s steady flow
Into Europe’s beating heart
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Let us not come nearer
To death's dream kingdom
Let us stop this war
Conducted by our politicians deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In an oil field
Obeying as copper wire obeys
To bring US current ever nearer --
Too weak a metal in her first meeting
In the twilight kingdom
III
This is the dying land
This is cultural land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a single fading Texas star.
Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Bending to one land alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with hatred
For a regime that she betrays with a kiss
As our prayers for peace turn to broken stone.
IV
If our eyes do not glint in anger
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost Europe
In this last of meeting places
They will grope together
And avoid speech
To criticise this bay of imprisoned terror
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
And our voice is raised
Against the perpetual stars and stripes,
When Germany’s withering rose
Turns to copper wire,
When she visits death's twilight kingdom
Bringing hope only
To empty men.
V
Here we get round the blinding truth,
Blinding truth, blinding truth
Here we get round the blinding truth
By not saying anything.
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 without response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very cheap
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
When one country bangs and others only whimper.
-Andrew Gledhill
Commentary by Hatto Fischer:
Andrew Gledhill has taken the unusual but inspirational step to recreate T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Hollow Men” to apply this poetic format to Merkel. The outcome is in departure from Margarete Thatcher as ‘Iron Lady’ the creation of a new and very powerful metaphor by calling Merkel the ‘copper lady’.
Where Eliot begins with
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Andrew Gledhill starts with
She is the copper lady
We are the stuffed men
Bending together
Headpiece filled with war! Alas!
For further reading it should be reminded that T.S. Eliot is an American who became a British Citizen and who used language in an innovative way to reveal what is left underneath the snow making us forget everything, if only to be taken by surprise what comes with April, with thaw, as if spring is equated with violence and death stalks in. In the poem ‘The Hollow Men’ this theme is echoed as being in “death’s dream kingdom” in which the poet wears such “deliberate disguises as “rat’s coat, crowskin, crosses staves” with things behaving as the wind behaves “no nearer” than that final meeting just avoided once again. Such is the case that in the world between idea and reality, concept and creation everything is voiceless in view of how the world ends not with a bang, but with a “whisper”.
Andrew Gledhill picks up this poetic omen of things to come by explaining that “the British may still complain about the after effects of the iron lady, but perhaps a malleable copper lady is even more dangerous because she has the ability to conduct the flow of Americanism straight into the heart of Europe.”
In the poem he expresses it straight forward for he marks her voice as being so dry that it does not even whisper defiance. Merkel is known to praise freedom but in her childhood in East Germany she did join the Communist movement rather than stay aside. No defiance. To the poet such voice “is quiet and meaningless / as wind in dry oil wells / or broken men without toil“.
Above all, he sees her not daring to meet Bush “with our dreams / in death’s dream kingdom” to pick up that theme of Eliot.
It is a powerful recreation of that poem. Moreover, the metaphor ‘copper’ is a prediction about what function Merkel shall fulfill. As perfect material to conduct America’s steady flow of negative energy into Europe, it is already clear that Merkel has affirmed the role of Nato over and before Europe’s own effort to reach a sense of governance based on true values. As Dick Marty says, Europe has been too silent, too willing to look the other way with regards to CIA flights transporting illegally prisoners in and out of Europe to hidden jails similar to Guantanamo. Merkel has said this illegal conduct must end eventually and Europe must come up with another proposal on how to deal with ‘terrorists who move outside the law’. But has not already the line been crossed on how America wages its war against terrorism? The latest missile attack on a house in Pakistan was meant to kill a terrorist, but in reality 18 innocent civilians, including women and children died, and only Pakistan protests. A spokesperson from the Pentagon would say simply into the running camera, these are unfortunate incidences in the fight against terrorism. As of late Bush would even say the 30 000 Iraqis killed since American troops entered Iraq March 23, 2003 is a sacrifice worth the effort to bring about democracy in that country. Human sacrifice justified by pretending to have noble ends in mind, that lets the poet speak up where politicians are silent:
Let us not come nearer
To death’s dream kingdom
Let us stop this war
Conducted by our politicians deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In an oil field
Obeying as copper wire obeys
To bring US current ever nearer
While the press claims Merkel’s visit to Washington was a success, it is important to heed the poet’s own conclusion:
Too weak a metal in her first meeting
In the twilight kingdom.
Last updated: 31. December 2005