Escaping the Headlines
The unbearable, the unerasable headline:
“Strikes on Iran Damage Cultural Heritage Sites, Infuriating Iranians.”
Golestan Palace, its 14th-century Hall of Mirrors
crashed to glass chips in a bombing raid—
the turquoise tiles of the Jameh Mosque
jigsawed on the pavement.
The news is like slivers of glass
in my mouth I can’t read it can’t
wait to get away from it.
And I do, to this artist’s residency
in the hills of Southern France,
the oldest château in Provence. Here,
walls of chiseled limestone
that have stood for nine hundred years,
no two blocks alike;
silvered leaves of the olive trees,
and tiny golden dandelions
racing down the rows of grapevines.
But next to the château’s chapel, an
interrupted archway,
the only remains of an entire cathedral
smashed by catapults
of Crusaders and Huguenots.
The best of what humans have fashioned
is by its nature horribly fragile,
and timeless monuments can be
blasted, but I deny the lie
that it ever needs to happen again