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