Death to the World

Adapted from “Ozymandias” by Percy Shelley.

I met a pilgrim from the Siberian desert

Who said: A vast and barren church

Stands in the tundra. Near it, I have heard

There stands a monument to a monk whose words

And collected works of deep inward meditation

Tell that their speaker well his ions abated.

Words which are hardly today mentioned

Yet inscribed on the hearts of those who them read.

And is inscribed on the monument:

‘Death to the World, and all is folly

Fear and tremble before the dread throne of judgment.’

All the collossal wreck of that monastery church decays

But the ghostly mem’ry of a lost mystic and his kin

And the snow and smoke blow that ghost away.