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The poem vividly describes the destruction of a grand, majestic and beautiful place into rubble using a variety of imageries - whatever left was only remnants of the distant past. The author then suggests that however much we refuse to let go about the things we have made, all good things must come to an end - "all human splendor like human beings themselves, is doomed to destruction and oblivion."
I chose the above three images to illustrate the point made by the author that as time goes by, most things would eventually doom, and they become only fragments of their former self. In the first two images, one can see the remnants that remind us of the two great empires that stood there in the past - Babylon and Khmer. As strong and powerful as they were, they were eventually conquered, and the empires fell apart. The ruins we see now not only reminds us of their former glory, but emphasizes the reality that nothing stands the test of time.
The third image shows an example closer to our daily life, with the similar message that the author of the poem is trying to convey. With the advent of E-book and E-commerce technologies, traditional brick-and-mortar bookstores are quickly being drove out of business. Readers used to frequent these bookstores, and now, with a click on their computer, they could have books delivered to their house or kindle. As such, this change in consumer's book-purchasing habit leads to the downfall of these traditional bookstores.
Wong Kin
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