The highways stretch, a silent, vacant grey,
The towers stand like tombs against the sky,
Where kings of commerce ruled but yesterday,
Now only winds recall the raven’s cry.

Yet deeper still, the city’s bones confess
A hunger never sated, dreams betrayed—
The monuments to progress coalesce
In rust and shadow, all our debts repaid.

A raven circles, witness to the fall,
Its shadow sweeping over fractured stone;
A requiem for those who built it all,
Vanished, nameless, forever overthrown.

Clocks ceased their measured, hopeful song,
No hands to mark hours drifting by;
Silence lingers, heavy, deep, and long,
One question echoing: not how, but why?

Once laughter spilled from windows blazing bright,
Now hollow halls remember warmth no more;
The moon presides in cold, indifferent light
Above the relics of a vanished war.

In gardens wild, roses bloom unchecked,
Thorns entwined with wires and broken glass;
Nature reclaims what men could not protect,
What once was purpose, now a shattered mask.

Statues stare with their sightless, stony eyes,
Facades slowly worn down by time’s disdain;
No prayers ascend, no hopeful voices rise,
Just dust and memory, and rusted chain.

Yet from the ashes, something faint remains—
A whispered hope, a seed beneath the frost;
For even ruin, stripped of all its gains,
Cannot recall what truly has been lost.

So let the raven circle as it will,
And let the winds compose their mournful number;
For in the quiet, something eerily stirs—until
The world awakens from its momentary slumber.

And if a dawn should break on shattered stone,
And gentle rain erase the lines of pain,
Perhaps the earth, forgiving all we’ve sown,
Will cradle life, and let us dream once again.

We labor, certain stone will hold our name,
Yet time reclaims the proudest works we’ve known;
Meaning is found not in monuments or fame,
But in the care we give to life beyond our own.