What are they now,
These monuments of men?
Torn down again and again
To rise eye-sore amid the scavengers
Crying to a cruel, unyielding heaven.
Until bomb-flat and neatly boxed they squat.
Temples to the must be got
This season of summer or spring or winter.
To passing trends, now love, now hate,
A hinterland of sales sprung from the craters.
No more the triumph of form,
Of human touch and warm embracing arches,
Of beauty built and blessed
By pure and desperate hope.
Fashions 'to-die-for' now short-lived in a godless world,
Nothing for us worth living less,
(We're worth more)
Yet die we must and this is how we cope.