For cities lost

Centuries of life lay swallowed
in the ancient structures;
the bricks and private histories of generations
together made the flesh and blood
of living cities.

Each building held the joy and pain
and a long line of routine;
supported fat and slender lives
while soaking up emotion into culture,
each character and atmosphere
carried forward to the future.

All that's left is to excavate
uneven pieces of a heritage.
The cities lost live only in surviving minds
whose pictures run away with time,
each in a different direction,
before they die.

Now only maps and photographs
revive the recollections,
confirm or deny
those last minds' eyes.
Overlay the poorly risen phoenix
with these images of how it used to be,
the stored up sense of time passed on those streets
can only be imagined now,
the spirit of the ages is destroyed,
now lost to those
who have to start again;
the cities would have given so much more.