Yesteryear (So Passes the Glory of Bagdhad)

YESTERYEAR

[So Passes the Glory of Baghdad]

Horses of the mist gallop through a mountain pass,
Desert legions straggle home through shafts of phantom suns.
Chieftains lie in tents of silk on rugs woven in dreams
Of curling domes and jinns. Stories tell themselves in thread.

*Stain the page with lines of blood.
March in time to finger drums.
Conjure paradise out of paint
Chipped in lost futurity.*

A bowed head, born of busts sitting on shelves of dust,
Reads and pores on its fateful past, a dim glory
Of incipience, a marble thought enshrined in hope.
The feather of progress flies on wings of arching stone.

*Trace the routes of brave vanity
Through dugout graves and leather books.
Search for the heart of man and wife
Twined on love-beds like twisted twigs.*

A throat made loose on wine will sing with night-charmed bards
A chant that dies forever on the lips of verse,
Of stars that pull the flesh from lust and draw themselves
On lapis eyes that never close in golden skulls.

by ananda

I wrote this in the month or two after the invasion of Iraq began in 2003. This is the great tragedy of our age... just so sad. I suppose there is a terrible beauty in it, but absolutely no redemption.