Why Not Try This One More Time

Once, I went to the green mounds
By the bay, by the raw seas

Of that clime, and I was struck
By how much they looked like mounds

On the green steppes half a world
From them, like the burnt, brown mounds

In the tan sands half a world
From them the next way. Next day

I tried to put this in words,
How all our homes, forts, and tombs

End up as low mounds, soft hills,
Lost in wind-blown grass or sands—

But we knew all that, knew it
An age or two since, and still,

We dug up more ground, stacked bricks,
Propped steel, cut more poems for mounds.