Completely Unremittingly Grim / Bleak "Art"

Comedy answer:

Shed Seven album dot jpeg

Songs from the Second Floor is the first movie to come to mind. It's great movie because even though it offers a very grim world view and no catharsis, the very poignant though often absurdist social satire makes it all bearable. Then there are those unremittingly grim movies, like Lilya Forever, which don't seem to have anything else to say than "the world is shitty, mmkay".

I didn't find Dancer in the Dark "unremittingly grim", but that's because it felt like nothing but a two hours of emotional sadism (with a nasty streak of sexism) on part of von Trier, so it was kinda hard to take the grimness seriously.

The novels of David Peace

I think Peace openly opposes all humour, which makes it a bit strange that he did a joint show with Haines.

The graphic novel "Epileptic" by David B. Stunning artwork, incredibly moving, but so sad. Had me in tears.

Tho perhaps I am missing the point.

mary ellen mark:

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1413/1028909842_27597fbc80_o.jpg

Tuomas, I think that the satire in Songs from the Second Floor does take it away from being a perfect answer. It can be pretty funny in parts. Most of my watching/reading is pretty grim, but I cannot think of anything that would truly work in this way - there is either catharsis or absurdity or grotesquery. I shall have to think harder.

Oh, and isn't Lilya Forever the one with the AWFUL ending, where they become angels and frolic about? Man, that was shite.

Yup, that's the one.

My point was exactly that the art which simply aims for bleakness without any balancing forces isn't often good, because bleakness on top of bleakness often becomes boring, which makes you care less about it. That's why SftSF is a better, and in my opinion more affecting, film than DitD, even though it's funnier.

Another example of "good" bleakness: Michael Haneke's The Piano Teacher. Cache and Funny Games are pretty bleak too, but they're maybe to intellectual to really punch you in the gut.

Well, I read Lilya as having a sort-of-happy ending, its bleakness about the world just turned into a pseudo-spiritual 'we can be happy in death' message, which can't count as unremittingly grim. If you're going to postulate about what happens after death in an unremittingly grim piece of art, it's going to be hellish. To be honest, I think unremittingly grim art has to suggest that one must continue living forever, otherwise there's always the element of escapism.

Do agree with you on Haneke, particularly The Piano Teacher.

http://ublib.buffalo.edu/lml/comics/pages/images/contractPANEL.jpg

sort of disagree. i think a stupid and pointless death with no redemption just a waste, is pretty grim. something like the end of the trial by kafka where they just kill the guy and you've read the whole book and then bang he's gone and it all seems so mean and futile. or 1984 or brazil, i mean they aren't unremitting but those sort of little man destroyed by unfeeling system narratives i fin really grim because you can sort of see it all building up. at the end of blood meridian the main protagonist is brutally killed (actually looking at the wiki suggests other interpretations) and the symbol of evil in the world is revealed to be pretty much imortal. that i find totally grim the idea that only evil seems to survive.

Hm, well, in Brazil, certainly, there is the fact that while alive he has the possibility of escape, so death there can work as a brutal reminder that you can't escape. The same thing goes for 1984. Resistance is futile.

So, yeah, you're right, death can work that way. I guess it depends on how the world of the story and the characters within it are portrayed. If they have fight in them, then death is the put-down. If they're trapped anyway, then life is the ultimate punishment.

Mike Leigh's Naked was pretty unremitting.

naw, that's practically a sitcom

couple of odd things that struck me as almost unremittingly grim:

* 300 - hello i am watching a film that is happily arguing the "virtues" of facism. of course i imagine "unremittingly grim" wasn't what the people making it were going for but because everything about it sort of seemed to me to be an advert for an incredibly bleak world view it felt that way to me.
* this sort of documentary / comedy about the death of bernard manning. vile man lives, spreads vile message, dies unrepentant.

the idea of this thread came watching the news a while back about genocide in, i think, sudan and wondering could art in anyway depict that kind of senseless horror.

bergman to thread

swans to thread

and i'm reminded by an ilx threrad about extreme movies. the worst were apprarently ones which just re-enacted concentration camp experiments, no one on those threads, seemed to able to find any worth in them at all.

Come with me, come to the land of batshit rightwing cartoonists

oh god yes: 'lilya forever', one of the worst films ever made. 'hole in my heart' was really bad too, and maybe bleak? i can't remember, fortunately.

threads to thread

http://www.junkiesfan.com/images/cover_untamedheart.jpg

Monkey Dust veers from light(ish) comedy to absurdly bleak satire in the blink of an eye; this contrast makes the depressing bits all the more so.

http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/pic/151/501287~Just-Married-Posters.jpg

10,000 kitchen sink dramas to thread

I mean, the Divorced Dad falling past the window in a Spiderman outfit is the most pathos-ridden piece of television OR film I've ever seen, and that's BEFORE his 'son' starts saying "Daddy? Daddy? Where have you gone? I like Spiderman really!"

hmm but it's kind of funny thou, innit. at least i remember it sort of encouraged you to not entirely relate to the situation, it was far to grotesque and comic to be real. though sometimes comedy makes things worse cos sometimes you then get another layer of sort of contempot for the protagonists.

scott you were one of the dudes on the extreme movie thread, i think. and you didn't care for the really nasty ones much.

i have an infinite capacity for horror movies. even bleak ugly ones sometimes. but the two hour torturefests? nah. i need something more to look at. it's kinda torture in a tedious way to watch those kinds of movies. i mean i get the point in an extreme metal kinda way. who can outdepress, outbleak, outhorrify, etc. but forensics grows tiresome.

Huh. From some of these last few suggestions, I'm guessing I have different standards of what it means to be 'unremmitingly grim' than most people.

Films: "The Pawnbroker" (scalding Holocaust survivor as inner city parasite drama), "The Plastic People" (drab and painful Polish realist examination of a miserable marriage complete with seemingly endless crying-baby-enhanced screaming couple fights), "Wolf Creek" (long torture n rape sequences)

Literature: late Beckett prose works such as "How It Is", Thomas Hardy novels, Webster's tragedies

Non-Fiction: Rwandan genocide documents, "The Sexual Criminal" (reprint of forensic collection of interviews with convicted psychopaths complete with crime scene photos and wretched personal bios)

drew, did you ever see the original dahmer biopic that came out in the early 90's? extremely no-budget grimness shot like gay porn:

http://filmotecagpuc.files.wordpress.com/2007/03/the-secret-life-of-jeffrey-dahmer.jpg

bergman's movies are certainly not "unremitting" in their bleaknesses!

yeah plus they are usually really beautiful to look at.

Drew, does The Plastic People have any relation to the Plastic People of the Universe? They're not Polish, but Czech, so close by.

did anyone ever see that movie about the german homosexual internet cannibal? That looks pretty unremittingly grim.

Maybe john justen and fluffy bear... nah, maybe not.

that movie looks good!

it kinda does, yeah. Keri Russell? Huh.

this is the kinda stuff i was talking about:

http://www.dvdmaniacs.net/Reviews/A-D/avon_dynasty_costello.html

http://www.dvdmaniacs.net/Reviews/E-H/guineapig3.html

http://www.dvdmaniacs.net//Reviews/A-D/august_underground_mordum.html

WARNING: UNREMITTINGLY GRIM AND BLEAK LINKS WITH NUDITY!

god almighty

definitely one of the grimmest books i've ever read:

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/n25/n126289.jpg

and it's totally "art" too! completely uncompromising.

passion of the christ was grim. only time i've heard the announcer say 'contains extended scenes of scourging' before the second half.

i also remember war of the roses as being full of bile.

that reminds me... Last Exit to Brooklyn is one of the darkest movies I can think of.

war of the roses is hilarious

M ordum was shot on digital video in Pittsburgh, PA

i wonder if any of the punks and freaks i used to hang out with in high school know these guys (i wouldn't be surprised). there is not much to do in that part of the country & it's so culturally conservative that some of the underground stuff is just about being as gross and offensive as possible

speaking of which, i just remembered a kid i grew up with owned a few joe christ movies which def. fit the description. they're terrible

also gaspar noe to thread

dennis cooper - closer

"there is not much to do in that part of the country & it's so culturally conservative that some of the underground stuff is just about being as gross and offensive as possible"

hello george romero!

it doesn't take much to bum me out these days though. About Schmidt bummed me out last night! maria too. and the night before that we got bummed out watching some sad woman movie with glenn close and cameron diaz and holly hunter as sad women. i don't need much bleaker than that.

have you guys all seen the lsd hotdog scare film from the 60's?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3pRVQVmFHg

it features a really grim troll doll.

Jim Goldberg's photography book Rich and Poor.

And even though it's already been mentioned in the first post, having watched Threads again last night, I'd have to put that up there.

And quite a few Joyce Carol Oates short stories.

you know what cheered maria & i up after About Schmidt was that Supertramputee video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNFW_hNkfi4

that and that band Complete on youtube that are so much fun:

Complete: this band is amazing

sorry, i'm all out of bleakness :(

The first film that sprang to mind, though I haven't seen it, is Tim Roth's The War Zone. I thought it looked pointlessly, exploitatively grim, but Tim Roth annoys me so that's probably just my prejudice talking.

Review: Ildjarn forges songs around looping structures embedding melody in minimized and noisy riffs within droning entropy shaping rebirth and joyful nihilism. Influenced equally by Profanatica and drone techno, this band slice out instants of resonance in melody and internal harmony causing multiple themes to be encoded simultaneously within one clattering hypnotic beat cycle. Thoughtful yet adeptly perverse and savage in everything from sense of harmony to physical violence in playing, this music aims to be more extreme than black metal can now tolerate. A distorted flight of incoherent vocals keeps time to the evolution of these striking but sublime melodies. Like a vision of Ragnarok, this music shows a positivity in total negative space.

Production: This was recorded in the Norsk forests of a college dorm room using a four track machine underneath electric lines. 1. Whispering Breeze
2. Blackened Might
3. Clashing of Swords
4. No Gleaming Light
5. Blazing Eye
6. Sinking Deep
7. Chill of the Night (Returning)
8. The Blade Flares in Red Light
9. Deepening in Grey
10. Midnight Interval
11. Descending
12. Away with the Dawn
13. Before my Eyes Forever
14. Reflecting Mountains
15. Brother of the Forest
16. Dead Years
17. Dark December
18. Untitled 1
19. Cold And Waste
20. Visions of the Earth (2nd Returning)
21. Risen Seeds of Time
22. Untitled II
23. Untitled III
24. Winter Embrace
25. Untitled IV
26. No Place Nowhere
27. Entering/Descending
28. Deepening in Grey
29. Away With The Dawn
30. Brother Of The Forest
31. Der Moerkner (Darkening)
32. Arter En Gang (Once Again)
33. Skogssvinet (Beast Of The Woods)
34. Taakekein (Home Of Mist)/ Leaving

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/0e/Man_Bites_Dog_film.jpg/200px-Man_Bites_Dog_film.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d9/Spoorloos.jpg

Thomas Hardy OTM....except it's a paradox since a world with Thomas Hardy novels can't be that bad....

man bites dog is also hilarious.

how about pop / rock music? i have not listened too much to "closer" by joy division but that has a reputation for being as unremitting as pop gets. though of course that has the story surrounding it, "metal box" seems pretty grim as well but that doesn't have the narrative. the manic street preacher's "holy bible" is sort of a checklist of grim genocide, execution, suicide, anorexia, the holocaust but is likely to get laffed out the room on ilx, but smarter people than me have repped for it.

Lou Reed - Berlin

"the human condition" - 10 hour long japanese epic film about world war II. last 3-4 hours or so is the protaganist wandering lost in the snows of manchuria, delirious, saying the name of his wife over and over again. good stuff.

xpost: For me, the really bleak thing about 'Man Bites Dog' is that it's meant to be funny. I don't often want the 90 minutes of my life back from a movie, but that one did it. Lars Von Trier and Mike Leigh have both defeated me, but at least I have some respect for what they are trying to achieve.

As for music, I dunno, as bleak as it gets, it's still always going to be cathartic for someone.

. . and Bela Tarr has a new film out, if you're looking for some GOOD bleakness!

"the human condition" - 10 hour long japanese epic film about world war II. last 3-4 hours or so is the protaganist wandering lost in the snows of manchuria, delirious, saying the name of his wife over and over again. good stuff."

want to see!

scott, there were three dvds made of it, but they're oop and hella expensive. ;_;

Bully
that French movie where Monica Bellucci is raped and then her husband kills the wrong guy aka Morbs' Favorite Movie

the really bleak thing about 'Man Bites Dog' is that it's meant to be funny

not all of it is! I mean, when it gets really vicious, I think you're supposed to realize that the joke's on you.

French movie - Irreversible

haven't seen it, but isn't Gaspar Noe's previous movie (I Stand Alone) supposed to be equally brutal?

Spider

My favourite unremittingly bleak book is The Passion of Judith Hearne. I remember just thinking, OK, I can't think of any reason for this woman not to kill herself, and that's awful.

The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, that should read.

Ohhh yes, Spider. Cronenberg jumps the shark.

Large swathes of Chris Morris' 'comedy' radio series Blue Jam are fucking bleak, but they're also frequently funny, so probably void of nomination here. Knowing what's unremittingly bleak is, I suppose, a subjective choice.

I haven't read all of it (nor seen the movie) but isn't Richard Adams' "The Plague Dogs" meant to be fairly depressing?

The bleakest, grimmest, most thoroughly misanthropic music in existence is probably still Godflesh's debut album Streetcleaner, a great little record in its own way but a thoroughly unpleasant experience (in a weirdly compelling manner).

. . and Bela Tarr has a new film out, if you're looking for some GOOD bleakness!

I was just about to post this:
http://images.greencine.com/images/movies/123250.jpg

"a great little record in its own way but a thoroughly unpleasant experience"

haha! unless you are me! i find it quite pleasant.

i did fall asleep listening to Obscura by Gorguts last week, and I can't say that it was the most pleasant experience. it just kept going and going and i was in that half-awake fever-dream state.

http://filmotecagpuc.files.wordpress.com/2007/03/the-secret-life-of-jeffrey-dahmer.jpg

scott this is carl crew. owner of the CIA (california institute of abnormal arts)

Haha, Scott! I did mean for the average listener! Actually, come to think of it, the last two minutes of 'Head Dirt' (or was it 'Dream Long Dead') are fairly good fun.

Or you could head straight for Sunn 0)))'s 15-minute album closer Bathory Erszebet (off Black One), seven minutes of tantalising drones followed by eight minutes of some dude croaking from inside a locked coffin as he's slowly asphyxiated by totally impenetrable layers of guitar.

yeah, there is no end to the grim metal. the last time i actually got spooked by a record that felt VERY clastrophobic and evil to me was listening to Deathspell Omega on headphones. and yet, i can't wait to hear their new album!

chaki, i don't know what the california institute of abnormal arts is! i will google it.

i still have never made it through:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1c/Shoah_DVD_cover.jpg

ah yes... me either. a punishing experience.

- The Match Factory Girl (Kurismaki)

- lots of Bresson - Mouchette, Au Hazard Balthazar, The Devil Probably, L'Argent

- Stan Brakhage's autoposy flick, The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes

- Cannibal Holocaust, The New York Ripper, tons of other sleazy Italian horror flicks

- The 'novels' of Peter Sotos, far more disturbing and unpleasant than anything by Dennis Cooper

i think drew brought up sotos on another thread a zillion years ago. he's kinda unreadable. i suppose it works as a statement or whatever. or performance art. i mean, at least dennis cooper is readable.

i've always kind of admired cannibal holocaust. i really do see it as a work of art. even if a lot of it is pretty hard to defend. it's filled with sadness. which is something you can't say about something like the new york ripper. the ripper is pretty ugly. and i am a fulci fan.

but this thread isn't really about readability, is it? so, yeah, sotos is bleaker than thou. he's up there. he wants to be de sade or something. i just find that kind of stuff tedious. which is probably why i can't read de sade either. just because you CAN write horrifying child rape porn, doesn't mean you should.

Sotos is the ne plus ultra for a certain marketplace. As for bleak novels that are really, really depressing but also really well written, I recommend Jean Rhys, especially "After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie" and "Voyage in the Dark". Harrowing descriptions of lives in which people just run out of luck and run out of chances.

yeah, i guess in the case of Sotos/New York Ripper etc i'm (mis)defining 'bleak' simply as tawdry-stuff-that-left-me-feeling-icky, soiled - but being a jaded old gorehound I'm perhaps more impressed than I'd like to admit when this stuff does still manage to shock the shit out of me (just as I'm still a suckah for the loudest noize shit that really does blow yr head off - Hijokaidan, Hototogisu etc) - i mean, stuff like The Naked Lunch doesn't really do it anymore, whereas the first time I read Sotos I didn't want it in the house, it was that upsetting

Agreed also abt Cannibal Holocaust being some kind of work of art and New York Ripper being some kind of piece of shit - but both of them have in common a v bleak view of the value of living things (see also all those Mondo flicks & semi-snuff documentaries)

bleak plays: Blasted by Sarah Kane, Saved by Edward Bond, The Homecoming by Pinter

it's strange the way that whitehouse - w/ or w/out sotos - trade in the same sorta sick stuff but also have this level of satiric camp that kinda undercuts it all

fred kelemen is pretty fucking bleak but he always overdoes it.

I can't seem to find it now, but the other day on my newsreader I spotted this photog who took these gorgeous/horrifying aerial shots of landfills & massive garbage dumps. They were almost like abstract paintings. They get a spread in the upcoming Harper's, I think.

Other bleakie auteurs - Pedro Costa, Michael Haneke, Peter Watkins

Blasted by Sarah Kane

Haha, how could I forget? Yeah, this is pretty extreme stuff (watching my friend of 6 years brutally raping another man onstage was quite startling to say the least), but seeing as it ends on a note of redemption, it's not ALL dark. For that you'd have to seek out her other stuff; I have it on good authority that some of her output (especially the one she wrote a week before topping herself) makes Blasted look like Ivor The Engine...

i've been wondering about jean rhys. i will have to read those. that's my kinda bleak. good lit sadness. richard yates. the easter parade kinda devastated me. or penelope fitzgerald's the bookshop. certainly not the end all and be all of bleakness, but just that quiet sorta kick in the stomach. a book that makes me go oooof.

i've become an old softy.

. . and Bela Tarr has a new film out, if you're looking for some GOOD bleakness!

I was just about to post this:
http://images.greencine.com/images/movies/123250.jpg

-- C0L1N B..., Monday, 6 August 2007 18:50 (2 hours ago)

i haven't seen Family Nest but i came to post this
http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/7274/h3ill640468damnationjg8.jpg
from Damnation

yeah, revolutionary road by richard yates had a similar effect on me - surburban lives of quiet desperation etc - handful of dust by evelyn waugh also had the same sort've effect, complete w/ a quietly terrifying trapped-in-hell ending that comes outta nowhere

bleak non-fiction - serial killer biogs like brian masters bks on Dahmer and Nielsen, Gordon Burns on Fred and Rose, and most especially the film of 10 Rillington Place

anselm kiefer

omg those links scott posted upthread
i had to look at all of them but i'm sure i wld be physically ill if i watched any of them

low production values, grainy video, flat light or super intense high-contrast light/colour on bad-quality video are all bleak/depressing to me in most cases in the first place - even the old degrassi shows, as much as i love them in certain ways, are somewhat bleak/gross to me b/c of production value alone!

cf most canadian tv from the 70s/80s

i don't think bresson belongs here but then.. maybe he does according to 'grim/bleak' just not in the same sense as some of this which (to me) is just brutal/insupportable (like gaspar noe).

some french language novels i've read that come to mind for being incredibly bleak - 'la vie devant soi' (romain gary), 'allah n'est pas oblige' (ahmadou kourouma)

Oh god one thing I didn't think of: "Salo" by Passonlini. They unbanned it for a breif window in the early 90s here so I went to see it. And I made myself stay grimly to the end. People were leaving in droves. It was Just So Horrible. The torture scenes at the end of the children with the beautiful classical music playing. Fucked up. I like to know I can say Ive seen it but I never want to see it again.

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/I/31MWCQRR9KL._AA240_.jpg

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/I/61VHAS3Y28L._AA240_.jpg

http://www.sciencemusings.com/blog/uploaded_images/goya-708961.jpg
(any of Goya's 'black paintings')

http://www.ticketspecialists.com/theater/images/king-lear.jpg

Relentless.

Oops.

http://www.ticketspecialists.com/theater/images/king-lear.jpg

Relentless.

or Titus Andronicus. yeesh.

i found Meet the Feebles pretty grim/bleak/ill-making

actually, Beckett owns this thread.

although, i can't think of a single piece of his that doesn't include some humor. maybe Hey Joe, Breath, Film, and some of the later non-dialogue pieces like Quad and Ghost Trio.

I would argue Shakespeare more so than Beckett because Shakes deals with betrayal within the family, within lovers, and within society -- his tragedies don't spring from depression but from acting with the best of intentions.

Also, I'd agree with poortheatre -- there's always the gallow humor with Beckett, and underneath it is the pleasure of wordplay, at least.

Another one:
http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/assets/product/0395120985.gif

Bleakest Shakespeare I know is Timon Of Athens.

We make ourselves fools, to disport ourselves;
And spend our flatteries, to drink those men
Upon whose age we void it up again,
With poisonous spite and envy.
Who lives that's not depraved or depraves?
Who dies, that bears not one spurn to their graves
Of their friends' gift?
I should fear those that dance before me now
Would one day stamp upon me: 't has been done;
Men shut their doors against a setting sun.

My dad says Troilus and Cressida is as bad, but I've never seen it.

When I want to think about bleakness, I recite the only bigt chunk I know off by heart, the "out out, brief candle" soliloquy from Macbeth.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.

Utterly bleak, utterly perfect verse.

I've always liked this

THE APPARITION.
by John Donne

WHEN by thy scorn, O murd'ress, I am dead,
And that thou thinkst thee free
From all solicitation from me,
Then shall my ghost come to thy bed,
And thee, feign'd vestal, in worse arms shall see :
Then thy sick taper will begin to wink,
And he, whose thou art then, being tired before,
Will, if thou stir, or pinch to wake him, think
Thou call'st for more,
And, in false sleep, will from thee shrink :
And then, poor aspen wretch, neglected thou
Bathed in a cold quicksilver sweat wilt lie,
A verier ghost than I.
What I will say, I will not tell thee now,
Lest that preserve thee ; and since my love is spent,
I'd rather thou shouldst painfully repent,
Than by my threatenings rest still innocent.

As for King Lear, it's obviously bleak in places, but overall I think it is more a moral play with a positive purpose. Yes, Cordelia dies tragically, maybe gratuitously, but not before Lear has learned his folly and reconciled with her, planned a future in jail where they sing like birds in a cage and talk of who's in, who's out.

The author of Timon Of Athens just seems completely, faithlessly misanthropic.

interesting point that all music has some kind of catharsis. i was thinking that the bleakest stuff just sort of leaves you sort of drained and empty. about a week ago i joined some people watching city of god about a third of the way in. i'd seen it before and remembered it as vibrant and exciting but where i came in was when lil ze is destroying knockout ned's life and after that it just seemed to be a load of children getting shot. which was pretty grim. without watching the first part of the film rocket's stroy seemed tacked on just to make a load of kids killing each other palatable. i later had a look on wikipedia and apparently that was actually the case. rocket is fictional but most of the horrific gang violence was real.

FTW:

EARNEST, earthless, equal, attuneable, ' vaulty, voluminous, … stupendous
Evening strains to be tíme’s vást, ' womb-of-all, home-of-all, hearse-of-all night.
Her fond yellow hornlight wound to the west, ' her wild hollow hoarlight hung to the height
Waste; her earliest stars, earl-stars, ' stárs principal, overbend us,
Fíre-féaturing heaven. For earth ' her being has unbound, her dapple is at an end, as- 5
tray or aswarm, all throughther, in throngs; ' self ín self steedèd and páshed—qúite
Disremembering, dísmémbering ' áll now. Heart, you round me right
With: Óur évening is over us; óur night ' whélms, whélms, ánd will end us.
Only the beak-leaved boughs dragonish ' damask the tool-smooth bleak light; black,
Ever so black on it. Óur tale, O óur oracle! ' Lét life, wáned, ah lét life wind 10
Off hér once skéined stained véined variety ' upon, áll on twó spools; párt, pen, páck
Now her áll in twó flocks, twó folds—black, white; ' right, wrong; reckon but, reck but, mind
But thése two; wáre of a wórld where bút these ' twó tell, each off the óther; of a rack
Where, selfwrung, selfstrung, sheathe- and shelterless, ' thóughts agaínst thoughts ín groans grínd.

(by the peerless Gerard Manley Hopkins)