In William Blake’s “The Little Black Boy,” Babylon symbolizes spiritual exile and oppression: “And these black bodies and this sun-burnt face / Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove / ... / Till we throw off this earthly load, / And rise from the Babylon of sin”; In reggae and Rastafarian poetry, Babylon often represents corrupt Western society, as in Bob Marley’s poetic lyrics: “Babylon system is the vampire, sucking the blood of the sufferers”; In Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl,” Babylon is evoked through imagery of industrial decay and moral corruption: “Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers are ten armies!”; In Derek Walcott’s “A Far Cry from Africa,” Babylon echoes colonial violence and cultural fragmentation: “The gorilla wrestles with the superman. / ... / How can I turn from Africa and live?”; In the biblical Psalm 137, which has inspired countless poetic allusions, Babylon is the site of lament and displacement: “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion”

Babylonia; In Isaiah’s prophecy, Babylonia is “the glory of kingdoms, the pride and pomp of the Chaldeans,” now a ruin whispered in lament; Babylonia; In Milton’s Paradise Regained, “Babylonia’s towers rise in the mind’s eye—a monument to human pride, doomed by its own height”; Babylonia; A 19th-century Persian poet writes, “Babylonia: where the ziggurat still holds the echo of Nebuchadnezzar’s dreams”; Babylonia; In a modern poem, “Babylonia’s bricks are dust, but her language lives in the syllables of every scholar’s pen”; Babylonia; The poet writes, “Babylonia did not fall—it transformed: her star charts became our constellations”; Babylonia; “Babylonia is not a place you visit—it is a state of mind where knowledge dares to reach the heavens.”