Great Zimbabwe (Southern Rhodesia)

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