for David Rosen
The Great Wall of China couldn’t hold back
every invader, or angle of attack:
the forces of the Mongol khaganate
galloped around it; others used the gate.
Antonine’s Wall wouldn’t hold, Romans knew.
Hadrian’s would—till the legions withdrew.
Constantinople’s Theodosian Walls
stopped everything, till Mehmet’s cannonballs
fell on them, smashing them to smithereens—
call it “diplomacy by other means.”
Jerusalem’s “Western Wall” gained renown
for standing; Berlin’s Wall, for coming down.
From Babylon to blitzkrieged Maginot,
walls came to mean things their makers couldn’t know.
Walls signaled virtue, or the gravest wrong;
a pointing toward who did (or didn’t) belong.
They could be power, pragmatism, art;
everything holding us together, apart.
Regardless of what they were fashioned for,
time would reduce each wall to metaphor.