Writing Iranian History For 3000 Years

the last persian king of kings died in Egypt not in constantinopola.

THE MACHINE

Poems aren�t 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.