Rebuilding the Acropolis

A poem by Achuthan Panikath

Tue Jul 07 2026

Every ripple on this Adriatic seems a templatized wake.
No oceanic rise has ever failed to strike terror
Today we’re afraid as they once were
They prayed, sought, tried, and denied.
What’s changed but the words and means?

A bartered deal for an ox at the Poseidon temple
Is as rich as the AI deal witnessed on its jaded stones.
As the last of the fire drowned itself once more
In its Sisyphean orbit, then and now,
Our eyes stay blinded to all needs but one
A wish to see this again.

Floating in these salty seas
The Antikythera mechanism seems reborn as Macbook Air.
The boats differ; the coasts differ;
He crackling waters still speak the same eternal language
Of uplifting love that blankets all who dare to wade.

Walking these pillaged lands
I realize the truth of this excavation.
It is not a moment that outlived time
But a relic of permanence.

Nothing has changed or ever will:
We are patterns; timelessly, spacelessly alike.
I pick up a stone and place it atop the marble column
And just like that I might have rebuilt the Acropolis again.