a prose poem(?)

Because Persia is very old, Neda. Persians have seen the sands of history fall past Zoroaster and Alexander and Ahura Mazda.

Long before the alleged Messiah of the Hebrews was allegedly ratted out to the Romans for various acts of civil disobedience, the laws of the Medes and Persians struggled to solve the ancient riddle of justice.

Long before The Prophet led a ragtag band of followers across the face of the desert, long before Crusades bathed the eastern shores of the Mediterranean in blood, long before the sun rose on the British Empire, long before Versailles and the Balfour Declaration, Persia was the fountain of scholarship and science and history and culture and literature and art and music and cuisine and a sophisticated appreciation of human nature that comes only with centuries of "there they go again."

And so, do not be arrogant, Neda. For you are not the first but the latest in a line stretching back too far for CNN to reach, too far even for the Guardian and the NYT to imagine, too far for "Iran Experts" to contemplate.

But be proud. For sleep comes to people and peoples, sleep the easy escape from uncertainty and hardship and the painful demands of change.

First chair in a section of the golden horn fanfare that reawakens Persia from a short and restless sleep.

And so they pour into the streets in your honor, Neda.

From the young, brash, arrogant West I stand in awe.

And I remember Cyrus and Artaxerxes and Darius; the Parthians and the Sassanids and the Samanids and all the waves of would-be conquerors who have washed back and forth between the Tigris and the Black Sea and been reluctantly civilized in the ancient cities of the Empire.

I am not surprised by the weary determination --again and again, conquerers and allies and opponents and foreign policy analysts and diplomats and soldiers and spies and priests and mullahs and dictators and secret police have attempted to pull your strings.

But Persia is never a puppet for long, and Neda is only the most recent knife cutting those strings.

Today Persia lifts the knife in the face of the latest fools who believe they can outlast a spirit that is older than the UN, older than The Prophet, older than democracy.

respectfully,
Bright