“Who built Thebes of the seven gates?
In the books you will find the name of kings.
Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?
And Babylon, many times demolished.
Who raised it up so many times? In what houses
of gold-glittering Lima did the builders live?
Where, the evening that the Wall of China was finished
did the masons go?”
Excerpt from the poem
Questions From a Worker Who Reads by Bertolt Brecht, 1935