Hollow man

We are the empty men, we are the masked men
Resting together, cavity, stuffed with straw
Figure, without shape, shadow, without nuance
Impotent power, the empty men
Movement, without action
All who have gone with true vision
To death's higher dwelling, may recall us here
Not as 'damned, destructive ghosts
But only as the empty men
Simply as the masked men
This is the lost land
This is the desert land
Here the graven images are built
Here is the place where they will attain
The entreaty of a lost soul's desire
Beneath the glimmer of a dying sun
Can it be so in death's second domain?
No longer asleep, lonely
At the moment of our greatest compassion
Arms that would embrace
Raised in supplication to toppled altars
Where have the eyes gone?
One finds no eyes here
In this empire of dying suns
In this vacant kingdom
This scattered realm of fallen empires
In this final assembly
We stumble together and are silent
Collected on the shores
Of the river of disturbance, the barren men
And for one moment the eyes reappear
As the eternal Son moving broken stone
In the land of shadow
The last wish of the straw men, empty men