Ruins of Ilium

When he was a boy
Digging in the dirt
Outside his palace bedroom,
Priam discovered,
On the very morning
Of an earthquake 
That had toppled many buildings in Ilium,
The ruins of a prior age.

And in the span of years
Following the spectacle
Of Helen’s absconding,
There was another boy
Digging another hole,
And finding ruins of a prior age.

And many more years beyond that,
Four hundred or so,
There was a poem
That in millennia to follow
Scholars could not agree
If its author were mythical
Writing about mythical things.

Such are the ruins of Ilium.

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