“Without consideration, without pity, without shame,
    they have built big and high walls around me.

    And now I sit here despairing.
    I think of nothing else: this fate gnaws at my mind;

    for I had many things to do outside.
    Ah, why didn’t I observe them when they were building the walls?

    But I never heard the noise or the sound of the builders.
    Imperceptibly, they shut me out of the world.”

        – Constantinos P. Cavafys, before 1911