On the arrogance and transience of power

[The Blue Flower]

I thought of this poem just now while reading about the Green Zone and "permanent" bases in the desert.


OZYMANDIAS of EGYPT
Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said:—Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

[patrice]

1. ". . . This is dead land. This is cactus land. Here stone images

are raised. Here they receive the supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this in Death's other kingdom?
Waking alone at an hour trembling with tenderness,
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone. . . .
T.S. Eliot

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. I can see this

some archeologist in the future finds a DVD and a player, and plugs it in with Bush saying "Bring it On"...and there is nothing else left.