Who were the builders of Great Zimbabwe? <br />No man knows . . . <br />Who were those <br />That quarried, chiseled, hewed, <br />Laid stone on stone, <br />Till the high wall stood <br />And their task was done? <br />Who and when <br />No man knows <br />Only that many men <br />In a time long gone - <br />Hundreds of years, thousands of years, <br />It is all one - <br />Under the terrible, fierce <br />African sun, <br />Sweted and wrought in their day, <br />And went their way . . . <br />But to what end they fashioned <br />High wall, strong tower, <br />Altar and citadel, <br />By what urge impassioned, <br />Desire of gold or power, <br />No man can tell. <br /> <br />Who were the dwellers in Great Zimbabwe? <br />No man can say <br />What manner of folk were they, <br />Nor what dark dynasties <br />Of blood and fear <br />Held, as they should not cease, <br />Dominion here, <br />Before - how swiftly, how slowly <br />No man can say, <br />Famine, pestilence or the foe, <br />No man can know - <br />The doom swept them wholly <br />And for ever away, <br />Leaving to time and decay <br />And the years' slow silt, <br />The gods to whom they prayed <br />And the strong places they had built <br />And everything they had made . . . <br /> <br />Empty as a bleached skull <br />Of the loud life, <br />The voices and the trafficking and the strife <br />That fills it full . . . <br />Empty and alone, <br />Empty of life, empty of memory, empty of all - <br />Only the wild fig, self-sown, <br />Clings with knotted fingers to the wall, <br />And the bright lizards on the sun-baked stone <br />Flicker, gleam for a moment, flash and are gone . . .<br /><br />Cicely Fox Smith<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/great-zimbabwe-southern-rhodesia/
