RUINS
Rodney J. Hugen
Old stones slump together
seeking comfort in their leaning
not remembering what used to be
when they were hard edged
and mortared in their places.
Sharp clawed vines crab a path
through the endless rubble.
Nettles, thistles, and briars
snatch at fox-frightened rabbits
burrowing in the rain dampened
mud beneath the ancient stones.
No creatures bustle along the road
beside the broken, dilapidated wall.
Only the aging and the destitute
pick their wary way through the residue
with little memory of brighter days,
no hope they will return.
Each day is the same as the other,
while slow grinding time wears away
even the imagination of a city.
The debris takes on its own patina,
a strange sort of ragged beauty,
since there is nothing to compare,
no ancient, wiser one to reveal
what the truer glory truly is.
Sleeping stones, crumbled blocks,
useless mortar, fragmented walls
all lie in quiet, peaceful comfort
knowing nothing is required
for they are only ripening ruins,
bearers of the ancient curse
an awful, damning, sentence, the
weighty words, “What might have been.”
And then a savage rumble sounds
deep within the ravaged earth
shuddering, shaking, shifting
slow at first and then rapidly,
a flaming, violent upheaval,
stone and rock spewing upward,
dislodging, destroying what once was,
demolishing the ancient way of death.
And the Repairer of Ancient Walls
begins the long, painful undertaking
of placing chiseled, mortared stones
on top of chiseled, mortared stones
until an unimagined city reappears.
Slumbering stones no longer sleep
or slump sad against each other,
but are held and hold in perfect plane
anchored in their well plumbed walls
affixed to others straight and true.
The Mason holds his dripping trowel
and smiles at what He’s done.
04/08/07 |
