Progress


Modernity has ravaged golden thrones,
The Kings are toppled, ornate crowns displaced,
That roll and ring upon the palace stones:
Decapitated, those heads the crowns once graced;
And severed, all the links of language with the past.
Dumb, unlettered beasts, we grunt and snort
Among the vine-choked, fluted pillars. No words last.
Antiquity s philosophies abort
Inside the wordless womb of Now. We swine
Have overthrown the ruined emperies,
Boar-tusk crude, we rove--barbaric and bovine.
The parchments all are shredded. Smashed, each frieze
Of carved Hellenic majesty. We root
Amongst the marble rubble where weeds shoot.
1989

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