poetry

Boulder Ruins

Mohit Khodidas

Nov 10, 2024 — 1 min read

The teleology of architecture is ruin.
The fate of empires is to lay waste.
Those cities turn to dust,
By the marauding armies of horses,
And elephants, and men in armour.
Armour of greed and hierarchy, Of memories of loss.
The granite boulders carved into monuments,
Only to be ground to dust,
By the squalor and stampede, Of centuries of neglect and abandon.
We build not to last but to live.
If I knew that everything will be ruin,
If I could see it,
If i could smell it,
Would I take another path
Or would I march everfaster on the same one?

~Found in the sack of a fortune teller named Zamana when he travelled through Vijayanagara, 1545.

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