Without reflection, without mercy, without shame, they built strong walls and high and compassed me about. And here I sit now and consider and despair. It wears away my heart and brain, this evil fate: I had outside so many things to terminate. Oh! why when they were building could I not beware! But never a sound of building, never an echo came. Insensibly they drew the world and shut me out.
Source: Translated from the modern Greek by John Cavafy. This poem is in the public domain
(https://poets.org/poem/walls).