Ruin / Ruins

Photo : Sumana Roy

Our theme is Ruin / Ruins today.

Ruins are portals to take you to another time. We are often awestruck at the stupendous past, visualizing those invisible hands of Time, Nature or Humans that might have worked to bring them to us in their current state.

Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Ruins effectively remind us of the ancient Roman Tradition known as Memento Mori, meaning ‘remember you must die.’ The tradition involved a slave whispering the phrase in the ear of a triumphant Roman General during a military victory parade. Ruins are an insistent reminder of the passage of time, temporality, invoking the themes of decline and loss.

The slow process of decaying, erosion that characterized the relics of antiquity is now at odds with the almost instantaneous, quick disappearance of modern ruins.

Ruins Of A Great House byDerek Walcott

I recently read in an online article that a newly bought, small abandoned house in Detroit was dismantled by its new artist owner and placed as an exhibit at the 2016 Rotterdam art fair to show its ‘authentically’ decayed state to be seen as a testament to the precarious condition of Detroit.

The present era is steeped in an extravagant ruination through disastrous wars, climate change etc.

You might use the word as a verb too to show the word’s might in our present day to day life.

              

Please link one poem that is your response to the material of this prompt. When you link your poem please visit other links in the spirit of the community