A Stone Wall
by Benjamin Heller

A stone wall, a stone wall
Or perhaps a place where stones may fall
Might it be that happenstance
Has brought these boulders here by chance?

Should I endeavor to discover
Like some disenchanted lover
Forsaking ignorance and bliss
To recognise what lies amiss

Why then I might have cause to pause
Cause recognised by local laws
And on this land that's not my own
I'd stand a while and gaze, alone.

But I won't take the nobler way
For then I might be here all day
And who among us has time so free
So ponder rocks beneath a tree?

And so I'll suffer for my choice
And never give this wall a voice
But all is fair in love and war
And in masonry, why, even more

As I walk away I turn
And looking back I can discern
The heaps of stones still in their place
My absence gives them no disgrace

And what is then the point, I ask,
If things which were, once, built to last
Become mere gawking tools, no more
What's the point, if that's in store

For all that we might leave behind
And furthermore, should we mind?
To be lost to time and now disdain
Do monumenta feel the same?