“Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” Nothing beside remains. The lone and level sands stretch far away. — Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias
Percy Shelley’s Ozymandias is not a poem about failure, but about the illusion of permanence. A ruler commands the world to admire his achievements, yet history leaves behind only fragments – authority without consent, power without foundations, surrounded by sand.
Cyprus today risks a quieter but
