At its vertiginous engineering –
Flimsy cranes pinning blocks to the sky
The great columns and slabs cloud spearing.
We are bewitched by its clumsy lurch
Into space because we are earthbound.
It dwarfs the handsome planes and the church
Echoing the hollow vaults underground
Its shafts are like vast sarcophagi.
They are allusions to our vanity
Crude attempts to defy gravity
Like monuments to some cruel deity.
We glance upwards as we wander by
We cannot climb to heaven, but we try.
Ziggurats (/ˈzɪɡʊˌræt/, Akkadian ziqqurat, D-stem of zaqāru "to build on a raised area") were massive structures built in the ancient Mesopotamian valley and western Iranian plateau, having the form of a terraced step pyramid of successively receding stories or levels.
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