Thanks so much for reading, Friendly Frog. Yes, it is horrifying to think of all that irreplaceable history -- not to mention irreplaceable human beings -- at the mercy of these fanatics.
My mind kept adding a phrase to the very end of the poem, sort of to create a loop back to the beginning. 'He knows as little of gods as I'.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, when I made the decision to have this poem be from the point of view of the lamassu, I decided not to touch too much on the Islamic State's agenda too much. (btw, I have an earlier version or three with an omniscient viewpoint and one from the point of view of the guy on the bulldozer, both of which got much more into the Islamic State agenda, but I thought the first version was less powerful, and the second version missed some poignancy because bulldozer dude is oblivious to the value of what he's destroying.) And I wanted to end with the bulldozer blade rushing at the lamassu, at the moment before it shatters to dust and rubble.
But I did try to allude a bit to what you're saying by having the executioner have hard eyes, stony ears, and rigid lips -- just like the "false god" he's destroying. He is as unmoved by and deaf to the lamassu's testimony as the lamassu was to the atrocities it has seen.
Of course the executioner, unlike the lamassu, doesn't have a value as a testament, an art object, and a door to history. I for one would happy to turn his own bulldozer on him and see how he likes it.