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http://www.cs.rice.edu/~s...minstrels/poems/1215.html
Regime Change
Advancing down the road from Nineveh
Death paused a while and said 'Now listen here.
You see the names of places roundabout?
They're mine now, and I've turned them inside out.
Take Eden, further south: At dawn today
I ordered up my troops to tear away
Its walls and gates so everyone can see
That gorgeous fruit which dangles from its tree.
You want it, don't you? Go and eat it then,
And lick your lips, and pick the same again.
Take Tigris and Euphrates; once they ran
Through childhood-coloured slats of sand and sun.
Not any more they don't; I've filled them up
With countless different kinds of human crap.
Take Babylon, the palace sprouting flowers
Which sweetened empires in their peaceful hours -
I've found a different way to scent the air:
Already it's a by-word for despair.
Which leaves Baghdad - the star-tipped minarets,
The marble courts and halls, the mirage-heat.
These places, and the ancient things you know,
You won't know soon. I'm working on it now.'
-- Andrew Motion
clemmati
5 Comments
During the 1990/91 Gulf war I was talking to young UK university students of possibly Arab or other north African descent, who had taken to wearing those Bedouin scarves, and I said how sad that these events were taking place in the Euphrates which was regarded as the ancient cradle of civilisation and they crowded round and asked me to explain further. They lapped it up and felt proud of their cultural history. I was appalled that they had not been taught this, as I had, in my older (also British) education. It did not make them feel less British, but they had not been given the chance to admire and be proud of their racial inheritance. In these small islands we British are mongrels and have no right to deny more recent immigrants of their history without losing our special British identity.
See my favourite poem below which epitomises the solid and down to earth British character in contrast to the more exotic middle eastern dream.
Cargoes
By John Masefield
Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir,
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,
With a cargo of ivory,
And apes and peacocks,
Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.
Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus,
Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores,
With a cargo of diamonds,
Emeralds, amythysts,
Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.
Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack,
Butting through the Channel in the mad March days,
With a cargo of Tyne coal,
Road-rails, pig-lead,
Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays.
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