Kindred Spirits

You weren’t so very different from us, you know,
and it’s funny how we (myself included)
travel half-way around the world now
to see you
And we stand in lines for hours,
wearing comfortably dorky clothes,
grinning for cheesy pictures
as we pay top dollar for over-priced water
and reprinted one-of-a-kind replicas--
All for the chance to gawk at incredible displays
of “archaic” excess,
for the chance to marvel at worlds gone by,
overcome with awe and reverence,
and a slight sense of superiority
at the smug notion of how far we’ve retreated
from that edge of barbarianism
on which you loved to teeter.
Yet really, if you think about it,
the years haven’t changed all that much
and we’re more brothers than descendents
when you get down to it.
If anything, these ancient monuments should stand
as warnings--lingering lessons
that should’ve already been learned
and filtered down to us through the ages.
So, excuse my cynicism,
but I guess I just find it rather amusing,
that people (yes, myself included)
clamor and scramble
to visit the remnants of a society
so strikingly similar to our own.