Statues

We don’t have any statues of Confederate generals where I live, although a lot of roads and schools are named for them.  Our only statue is in the park downtown, and it’s of a dolphin.  That’s a bit odd for a city roughly 250 miles from the ocean, but, there you go.

Some people are offended by statues, some people think they help preserve our heritage.  Personally, I don’t give a damn about statues.  If they’re making people feel bad, take them down and plant a nice vegetable garden in their place.  Share the tomatoes.

All the talk lately of statues reminded me of this:

OZYMANDIAS of EGYPT
by Percy Bysshe Shelley, published in 1818 (source)

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said:—Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

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• Posted in: Current Events ♦ Poetry
• Tagged: Current Events, East Texas, poetry