A Worker Reads History - Bertolt Brecht

A Worker Reads History - Bertolt Brecht
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Who built the seven gates of Thebes?
The books are filled with names of kings.
Was it the kings who hauled the craggy blocks of stone?
And Babylon, so many times destroyed.
Who built the city up each time? In which of Lima's houses,
That city glittering with gold, lived those who built it?
In the evening when the Chinese wall was finished
Where did the masons go? Imperial Rome Is full of arcs of triumph. Who reared them up?
Over whom
Did the Caesars triumph? Byzantium lives in song.
Were all her dwellings palaces? And even in Atlantis of the legend
The night the seas rushed in,
The drowning men still bellowed for their slaves.
It's a well known fact that a good proportion of people in Rome lived in smaller versions of the Colosseum, by the way.