Ozymandias in the City

Ozymandias in the City

Great blind eyes stare out

From centuries, no, millennia past,

Smooth blank orbs that show

Little or nothing of the man

But everything of the god-king

Who ruled like no-one else.

Full lips that have never opened

And never will, now, nor

Speak the secrets of the ages

Lost now in the sands of time.

A fragment this is, though vast

Enough to crush us all with ease

If toppled from its plinth.

Cracks show, crevices where time

Has not been kind, or, more likely,

Workmen have been careless

And have dropped this colossal thing

That gazes now, implacable,

Over not the shimmering temples

Nor the changeable Nile,

But merely an army of tourists,

The curious and the idle,

Here to get out of the rain.

Rameses 2

British Museum September 15^th 2017