Along the Tigris and Euphrates’ verdant, fertile banks

the world’s first cities started, and in order to give thanks

their people carved in sandstone, ivory and gold

the gods that brought them harvests of the crops they bought and sold

A harp of gold from Sumer, and Hammurabi’s code

that first spoke of rules to guide our lives from youth until we’re old

The final books of Gilgamesh, that first heroic tale

All these things and so many more were accumulated there

No kingdom lasts forever, no walls are tall enough

To the victor goes the spoils, and the fallen then must trust

that their heritage of expression is not trampled into dust

And so down through the ages of the Persians, Greece and Rome

The Parthians and Sassanids, and Muslims more well known,

objects of majestic culture survived and then were stored -

until the twenty-first century when from the west came war

This conqueror was different; no trace of the past he sought

so he let the treasures of millennia be looted by a mob

Now all the world is poorer for the knowledge that’s been lost

of Ur and the Gardens of Babylon how can one assign a cost

Some day he’ll be remembered but not for what he thought

Rather for all the destruction to our heritage he brought

A harp of gold from Sumer, and Hammurabi’s code

that first spoke of rules to guide our lives from youth till we’re old

The final books of Gilgamesh, that first heroic tale

All these things and so many more were accumulated there