Among The Ruins

In an unnamed grove
There lie the jilted remains
Of a fortress, once great.
Nothing more now than
Skin and bone,
The broken skeleton
Of a long ruined citadel.

Today, these walls are dwarfed
By pebbles,
Though once they were crowned by the sky.

The terror they used to inspire
Now replaced,
Deafened by the far eerier sound
Of nothing.

The shadows flit
As the day passes by,
Cloaking the mourning mountains
In black.

The tooth marks
Of Time;
That great devourer of worlds.
It has snacked upon its towers,
And dined upon its guns.

Where once a mighty structure stood,
Now a body lies.

These halls used to be ruled by Lords,
Great feasts echoing into the night.
Now the echoes are the screeches of owls,
As they hunt the lonely mice.

The fortress moans in pain,
Begging a simple shroud from the grass,
And a silent tomb of
The hills.

As its wild inheritors,
By night the birds perform
The funeral rites,
While a chorus of crows
Sing it to its final rest.

Here, in this green cemetery,
This brutal monument to
Our triviality,
I took a lesson.

In this cathedral of the dead,
I learned one thing.
This was a glory of the world,
And even it must die.
As this fortress must go
All our marks upon the world,
Powerless before the passage
Of unstoppable Time.

This post took inspiration from a work by Spanish poet Francisco de Quevedo, whose work I translated and updated to suit my own style.

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