I built the playhouse
To withstand
The seige of time.
Like Hadrian,
I dismayed the border people.
Starlight shone through
Crescent moons
Like the Ishtar Gate of Babylon.
Children shrieked and wailed
Against those walls
As nomads in northern China,
Or Philistines in Jeruselum.
But time is a formidable outsider,
And my small walls would tumble
To the blasts of tempus trumpets.
My hand runs lovingly across
Your names on those
Memorial Walls.