17.4.09

How to Win a Cosmic War by Reza Aslan, on sale now.


The Surprising History of Persia

THE DESERTS GROW:
WOE HIM WHO DOTH THEM HIDE! -Friedrich Nietzsche

Here's the deal with all things
that are there anyway,
it was over once it began
yet repeats itself
to recognition by definition
in whole or in part.
A man leaned forward
to speak enthusiastically, no
to intimidate
with a percussion
of factual expertise:

Read the history of Persia,
the conversion under
the Ottomans, the violence
that they hoped
to ward off
by choosing otherwise.

Why? I said,
I am not a Persian
nor even close.

The man leaned back
and for one instant
remembered the chances
he lost with me
long ago. And now,
there he is
and we are much older,
some of us wiser.
Not for a moment
did he realize
that it was written,
he was the stone
upon which I stepped
and had he not insisted
upon my company
that day,
I'd not be right
here trying
very hard
to convert
his history
without device
into a matter of fact
elopement from the ages
which captivate and deliver
us all.


Ahuramazda. Selah.



This is my sigh.
It is long and it is complicated.


--The ass, however, here brayed YE-A.






Had I told him the truth
but my tongue
took leave,
what I know
is not in the books Ghassan,
and I am history's unlikely guess.

Last night I remembered
that here in space
we wait for someone
to come pick us up,
lonely travelers
in a context of stars.
These are ordinary things to us
but to those ignorant
of the long lasting drama
it all seems so precious,
mini doctrines woven
into the fabric of time.

Amen. Alelujah and remember me.
Oh please remember me
for the decorous glances,
lost chances, the amorous advances.




http://carmenisacat.blogspot.com/2006/03/new-and-improved-but-never-finished.html






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