46. Persia Becomes an Empire

Out of the ancient deserts

Where sphinxes lived in mudbrick temples

There arose a benevolent winged king.

His name was Cyrus the Great.

He hatched a dragon in the land of Media.

Under the guise of religious revival.

The dragon he called Persia.

Persia quickly grew

As it swallowed up nations and old empires

The dragon swallowed the rest of Media as a snack

Then picked the bones clean of Assyria

It was a nice appetizer.

Following the Tigris and Euphrates

He had Babylon for dinner.

For desert the dragon found Anatolia’s delight

Picking his teeth clean with Egypt and Israel.

Under Cyrus and his sons

There was tolerance.

The dragon didn’t discriminate.

He didn’t ask his new foods to be digested into the new country

They liked him for it

As they wrote pages praising him

In history and religion.

31. Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia,

A jewel between the rivers,

Shining through the dust and mud of the fertile plain.

The people were at the mercy of the gods Tigris and Euphrates.

They were cranky and unpredictable.

When they felt generous, they’d flood the land

The crops would be destroyed.

If they felt stingy, the land would dry out.

The crops would be destroyed.

In order to appease their gods

Ziggurats were built.

Temple towers

With stairs going up to the heavens.

“Dear gods,” the man said.

“I survived to the next year; the appointed time passed.”

“I turn around, but it is bad, very bad;”

“My ill luck increases and I cannot find what is right.”

With the rivers Tigris and Euphrates

Even the diviner with his divination could not make a prediction.

Since Sumerian gods didn’t create a better life it was up to them.

The gods didn’t care.

To them, man was to work and slave in the fields

Sumer begot Akkad which begot Assyria and finally Babylon.

The land begot Israel from father Abraham in Ur.

Babylon’s great kingdom and their great king

Saw to it that laws were written

So that order can be restored.

An eye for an eye,

A tooth for a tooth.

If a man has knocked out the eye of a patrician,

His eye shall be knocked out.

If a patrician has knocked out the tooth of a man that is his equal,

His tooth shall be knocked out.

And so it was,

Order was restored

In the land where gods didn’t care.