(After T.S. Eliot)

Beneath the hum of fluorescent skies,
They shuffle, cart to cart, aisle to aisle.
A thousand faces, mirrored back,
Each one a ghost, reflected hollow.
What will you buy to fill the silence?
(A voice whispers: "Nothing is enough.")

Steel gods stand still, their logos glowing,
Burning bright in the temple of choice.
The Priest of Bargains chants his rite:
“More is more;
The less you think, the more you are.”
The congregation sways in time
To the click, the swipe, the rhythm of buy.

I saw them in the glass towers,
Stacking clouds in pixel rows,
Selling futures in digital dust—
A feast of shadows, a banquet of air.
They thought it freedom,
But the weight of their crowns
Bent their heads toward the ground.

I walked along the branded river,
Its banks paved in golden plastic.
I saw the hikers, shrouded in fleece,
Not climbing, but posing—
Fingers stretched,
A frame for the fall of the world.
Their path led nowhere,
A circle traced on ground too worn
To remember its roots.

Here, the gods are silent.
Their mouths are full of coins,
Their altars heavy with the weight of want.
"Consume!" they say,
"For the soul is light—when sold in pieces."
The hymn rises, a fractured tune,
A melody of scraps and borrowed notes.

What is left of the self,
When all it knows is what it’s told?
When shadows flicker on the wall,
Do you dare to turn and see the flame?

Shall I tell you what lies beyond the feast?
A table overturned, the light of a single match.
The ashes of altars rise like morning fog,
The faint hum of forgotten roots,
The river singing its own name.

These fragments I have shored against my ruins:
The silence of the forest,
The cold of unbranded stone,
The self, a whisper, unbought, unknown.