.. a poem by Shelley comes to mind.
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away".
With prescient élan, the mention of the 'trunkless legs of stone' evokes the image of a forlorn tower of stone, much like the increasingly disrupted and abandoned, formerly high profile construction projects in Dubai. A shattered visage of the Bedouin of old, with a sneer on his wrinkled lips and the lone sands that stretch far away - complete the image of recklessness and decay, that now emanates from a city that strived to be a jewel in the crown of the middle east.
Will it ever recover?
