THE MACHINE
Poems arent made of beautiful thoughts; poems are machines made out of words.
-William Carlos Wiliams, found on The Internet.
I have long wanted to try to summarize Iranian history in a poem. I have read about Iran and talked about it for years, as one inevitably does, being a member of a religion with its origin in Iran. Not being a specialist, a historian, or even someone particularly versed in that history, I have tried to take what I know and forge this knowledge into some expression, some machine, that puts the nearly three millennia of its history into focus, at least an initial focus for future revision and elaboration. The exercise is not unlike making a machine: to forge 3000 years into twenty-five lines is indeed a machine-like exercise. The exercise is impossible artistically-aesthetically; it needs the efficiency of a machine to make such a coldly efficient, but somewhat crude, attempt. -Ron Price, 4:15 pm, 9 January 1996, Rivervale, WA.
Your civilization, culture, nation,
has been nibbling at other civilizations
for millennia(or been nibbled), as far back
as the Assyrians some 2700 years ago and
before then beyond Turkestan or the Caucasus.
Your first dynasty of kings, the Achaemenid,
had its origin in a semi-mythical king nurtured
by an eagle. But then you conquered(no nibble)
all the four great powers of the middle east:
Egypt, Babylonia, Media and Lydia.
You provided, under Cyrus, a unifying empire
and you gave peace to Western Asia for 200
years(550-350 BC), before the Seleucids and
the Sassanians ruled you and then another
story begins under the Arabs and Byzantines.
And on-and-on past: Turks, Mongols, Safavids
Qajars and Pahlavi: long, tortured centuries,
until you produced a King of Kings Whom
you exiled to that once great city, Baghdad
and then to Constantinople, the end of the jetty.*
Installing Him in that prison city Akka
to finish out His days, you seemed to lose
all greatness. Cyrus old dream of unity
will be realized in your lands. Billions
will come to you, revering His sacred places.
Some mythological-metaphorical eagle
will again ensure your greatness, nurturing,
as he has, the origins of a spiritual dynasty
that will last half a million years over the
entire surface of the Earth: O Persia!
Behold and wonder!
9 January 1996
* Constantinople is sometimes referred to as the end of the jetty of Western Asia.
Modern Turkey, as you can see on a map, sticks out like a jetty from the continental landmass of Asia.