Behind stone doors the dead sleep on,
two thousand years and more of slumber.
They’re waiting for the trumpet call,
but what’s another year to them?

Their clothes now hang long out of fashion,
the colours faded out of sight,
their tongue has fallen still, their names
forgotten to the mists of time.

Imagine if they woke today to
this world they wouldn’t recognise,
where billionaires fly out to space
and knowledge lives in webs online.

Where hearts aren’t weighed at judgement time
but swapped if ailing to save the living,
and gold’s exchanged for virtual digits
that dwell in plastic cards of credit.

But then they’d take another look
and smile that boney smile again,
as those that have still rule the roost,
humanity has barely changed.

On our Dalyan boat trip on the 7th, we passed the Necropolis. The ‘residents’ were buried some two and a half millennia ago. Life now is surely very different and yet, somehow the same…
(09.11.25)

© Ben Quant 2025