Modern Ruins Poem by William Kruse

Look upon the Parthenon, upon the Coliseum.
Stare in awe and wonder at the Pyramids and Sphinx.
Search the ancient temples of the Aztecs, Incas, Mayans.
Study the old empires through what they left behind.

See the Eiffel Tower, the skyscrapers of Manhattan,
the heights of architecture, soaring high above the land;
standing proud and resolute in inanimate indifference
to cries of human conflict in the chaos far below.

Watch in fascination the world in current turmoil,
more lostness this last century than all the time before.
Learn that modern ruins do not lie in crumbling mortar,
but in dreams of the disenfranchised, in hearts of the dispossessed.