Soliloquy: Heartless Stone

There stands the heartless stone atilt behind a weedy veil. The statue’s artful form, eroded by some hundred years, still holds the shape of man. The countenance is wholly lost; its face, so marred by time, bears no identity. This monument, erected long ago, now meaningless, had once meaning which is now lost. What hand chiseled? What model posed? What purpose did it serve? Was it a god, or some great man, whose weathered memory is leaning in the shadows there? In this strange world so many things must pass away, but still odd bits remain. How mute this heartless stone, and yet how loud its presence here. See how it stands, though it stands not so straight. See there the careless tendrils hanging off of it. So look upon that marred image, and look within the shadows there. Anon, this too the earth will swallow whole, and death devours all. Until that day these heartless things, though beaten by the storm of age, proclaim what silenced voices try to say. Your voice one day will be forgot, your face unknown, your deeds undone. Yet maybe something done will last as lasts that heartless stone.