Azure skies turn grey and belch with turbulence.
Everywhere there is evidence of change.
Towers fall; mountains wear down to undistinguished mounds.
There’s one whose name gave birth to legends of gods,
of giants who contended for the earth,
where seven cities lay in crumbled, mixed-up heaps,
covered now with a coppice of flamboyant trees.
It is easier, with all the historic facts in mind,
the epics which took the place of people and of stones,
to comprehend those fearful backward steps,
the do-not-touch-me syndrome that had not the will to clean or even raze,
so that so-called experts wander here, disconsolate as hungry cows,
unable to find a scrap of inspiration in all those layers of debris,
that stymied architects, world famous, who had gathered here to build,
but could only stumble, stare, and strike a pose,
and that those especially who would foot the bill,
who here let even their cigars grow cold,
said, better let’s leave it the way it is, a memorial of sorts,
so the spirits will not be disturbed by what we do.
Procrastinate then. Abrogate your former needs.
Consider the implementation of a park instead,
an ecological reserve for endangered species on the run.
But shun this place. Pass it by. That errand
is of more significance. And look aside.
Demons reside where people fall.
Disintegrating memories are gatherers of dust.
Old leaves shatter like shards of glass.
Compost heaps fill crannies, soften contours, cover stone.
A tumulus a mound a place to live,
where archeologists may read between the lines,
and digging, disinter a plethora of signs,
fanciful fragments, artifacts of an inadmissible time,
an IRT or KFC,
or some note in Arabic which will confound the issue altogether.