Lee Circle, New Orleans Poem by Mark Sauer

The column of their banished demigod
(From whence no eyes gaze down, nor upward to)
Floats unnoticed above a city trod
By orphaned ghosts drifting in aimless queue.
The memory of heroes is no more
And despair is the breath in their nostrils:
Without history or hope, they yearn for
Nameless things, some lost meat or drink to fill
The void within their hollow shells. Empty
Is the plinth, the altar bare of idol.
They toppled themselves with their enemy;
The icon of the foe had clad their soul.
His greatness was their measure; his statue
Raised them; they fell, when him they overthrew.