Venice’s Commemorative Monument to Bartolomeo Colleoni - 1488



The general glares downwards from his horse,

faithfully keeping watch over the mundane,

the tedious progression of centuries.

A sentinel, he had imagined himself—a noble,

intended to become immortal,

traveling ever forward in time,

defying the erasure of memory.



But time is the enemy of all things.

The pigeons and the rain could be tolerated;

time, however, has become relentless and unyielding.

It has eroded his heroic relevance,

he watches unblinking as his glorious benevolence

fades from all memory.

Generation after weary generation

manifests the ruinous decay of collective forgetfulness.