To Mourn the Death of a Mighty Illusion

That morning I woke the sculpture was dead
rusting beneath an angry sun’s head.
The townspeople wept before the cleaved rocks
remembering the image absorbing the shock.

“That sculpture was loved,” they cried out in pain
“an upstanding man, a symbol of fame”.
Fame of the world! Where’s the virtue in this!
For what did he fight and where did he sit?

“His beauty was grand and so picturesque,
the firmanent smiled on his marble-white breast”
Who care’s of this form? This decietful visage?
Was his mind great? For what reason you cry?

“Foolish old thinker! You speak ‘gainst the sage?
The whole of our passion? The king of our age?”
I gazed at the corpse dissolving to dust,
Congealing with dirt atop the earth’s crust

“For this you all cry! This pendant of craft?
This image has dwindled! Its era has past!”
The grieving fell deaf, bewildered with fear.
Their gaurdian persihed beneath heaven’s sphere.

“Awaken yourselves! You gullible souls.
Your gaurdian's dead, his body is cold.
His spirit has flown far from this grave sight,
expanding in mind advancing in height”

They lacked a narration to their tragic plays,
to see that earth’s fashion was passing away.
Their gilded epochs and towers of gold
were starting to merge with crackpated roads.

The sculpture departed, while the people cried “death!”
oblivious that it never had breath.
The ornament paled in my memory’s hand,
returning as one with the barren land.

Armies of rain washed over the ruins
converging the two in beautiful union.
“Why aren't you crying?” They asked in confusion,
as I smiled at the funeral of their mighty illusion.