This is the famous Babel Tower,

You’d think it had grown since yesterday.

We are the architects of that power;

Oh, that the clouds would bear it away.

When our morning stint is done

We watch the mannikin sentries stand

Shoulder to shoulder with the sun

(They are like tribesmen of the air)

And view the geometrical line

Of shadow cutting in two our land.

What have we fashioned but a sign?

This unending quarry strewn

With rough and smooth and wicked stone

To mount that gun aimed at the sky:

What have we made but an empty sign?

The archaic clouds pass slowly by.

What are our masters? Who are you there?

We scarcely see you. May there come

A great wind from a stormier star,

Blow tower and shadow to kingdom come.

This is the old men’s story. Once

Voices were there, resounding words

Of an incomprehensible tongue

Fit for great heroes and great lords,

But never spoken anywhere.

And once a simple’ country song

Began and suddenly ended. Since

No message drops from the middle air

Except when a dead lord flutters down

Light as a frozen and mummied fly

From the perpendicular town.

(They have no license there to die.)

We cannot bear to scan that face,

Cover in haste the unchristened head,

Heap dust and rubble upon the place.

We too die. So look the dead

Whose breath stopped on a different star.

Who art they? We are what we are.