OZYMANDIAS SINGS

OZYMANDIAS SINGS

This must be the place:
here is the requisite reek of rank antiquity
and the shattered symbols
signify the roots of old religions
inextricably intertwined
and hating it.

The debris desert extends
to the eye’s furthest range;
formed not by ages,
grit-ground to dust,
but rubbled in a second’s shocking blast:
rising heat lends a molten mirror
to soften the shards,
and dust shrouds hide the dead
and bury hopes.

Limbs are there, trunkless to be sure,
without stone’s strength to stand,
broadcast like bitter seed on rocky ground.
And faces too, gore-ridden, slashed and torn
amid the toppled town
where no towers nose the air
and no sunshone windows wink and stare.

The scattered chiselled words of Ozymandias
Lie wide-strewn and mute: though
the heedless mighty, authors of despair,
take recreant refuge in distant lands.
Once, hard-carved words on stony ground -
but this time, in no time at all,
with a voice not unlike a rocket’s whine,
Ozymandias sings.