Look at the elaborate crests chiseled into this stone wall shattered by fate, the crumbled city squares, and the hue and cry of giants rotted away. There are caved-in roofs, towers in shambles, rime on the limy mortar, a storm-wall tilted and scarred, half-fallen, slumped by time. An earthly embrace holds the royal architects rotting in their graves and lost to the cruel grip of the ground, while a hundred generations passed away. This wall, mapped and veined by lichen, stained with red, outlasted one kingdom after another, long stood upright after storms: lofty and broad, it has fallen. The rampart hewn and wedged together, sharpened roughly and polished, an ancient structure well-worked by men . . . ringed with encrustations of soil still prods the brain and draws up a fiery clue.
From "The Ruin," translated by Yusef Komunyakaa, as found in The Word Exchange
the footnotes you didn't want
Look at the elaborate crests chiseled into this stone wall
shattered by fate, the crumbled city squares,
and the hue and cry of giants rotted away.
There are caved-in roofs, towers in shambles,
rime on the limy mortar,
a storm-wall tilted and scarred,
half-fallen, slumped by time.
An earthly embrace holds the royal architects
rotting in their graves and lost to the cruel grip
of the ground, while a hundred generations
passed away. This wall, mapped and veined by lichen,
stained with red, outlasted one kingdom
after another, long stood upright after storms:
lofty and broad, it has fallen. The rampart
hewn and wedged together, sharpened roughly
and polished, an ancient structure well-worked by men . . .
ringed with encrustations of soil
still prods the brain and draws up a fiery clue.
From "The Ruin," translated by Yusef Komunyakaa, as found in The Word Exchange