Magna Civitas

Ozymandias’ children live

For it is they who place

Great towers of glass and steel

Upwards, to the sky, symbols

Of earthly greatness.

Compete for the sun’s light,

O dwellers within,

While below your faceless images

Casts shadows on the streets

We tread. We don’t look up.

At night, you turn on other suns.

Different colours, words of light

Blazoning the skyline,

Refecting on the harbour,

Never leaving the eyes alone.

When, as gods must always bear,

Your temples crash, dead pillars,

They will be replaced, and

New venerations rise, bigger,

Glinting with skyblue, sunbright.

Empty, some, they wait only

The time to come, when surely

Spaces fill behind the glass.

The for-lease signs tumble,

And we animals live within again.