Poetry outlives empires, jade, gold, and burned libraries

Evidence

My flowers will not come to an end, my songs will not come to an end. I, the singer, lift them up; they are scattered, they spread about. Even though the flowers wilt and wither, they will be carried there — to the house of the Giver of Life. … Here Nezahualcoyotl hopes that though everything on earth perishes — jade, gold, feathers, flowers, and human life itself — perhaps SONG, perhaps poetry, the beautiful ‘flower and song’ of the human spirit, might endure, might be carried up to the house of God, might be a kind of lasting immortality. And in a way, he was right: for here we are, more than five hundred years later, on the other side of the world, still reading and lifting up his songs — which truly have NOT come to an end. — , A Year of World Stories, 10535

Categorization

• SEED: This could anchor an essay on what survives catastrophe — songs and stories versus stone and metal.
• XREF: connects to: Poetry imparts form to knowledge and is therefore never obsolete. — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 436

Related

• Poetry imparts form to knowledge and is therefore never obsolete. (similarity 0.84)