Jane Monach – our poet on Day 682 of the daily poems – has devised a clever means of deriving a Found Poem from a new history of the world.
New histories
A collage from Peter Frankopan’s ‘The Silk Roads – A New History of the World’ (top line from page 10 and every 50 pages after) intermingled with my own images, in response to the text.
They gave us gifts of rice, wine and textiles,
while damselflies chased islands of seaweed
in the name of Buddha.
Christianity not compatible with dust clouds,
nor with footsteps of armies,
built felt dwellings, warehouses, royal palaces,
created a dark cumulus, threatened the primacy of Baghdad,
while the ruler of Kwarazam,
silk smooth, toes curled,
surveyed slaves, and a thousand other things of value,
giving position and power
to feathers and skeleton leaves.
Europeans might have seen flurries of autumn heathermist
as a Russian storm brewed fears
that steppes grew wheat-green and stippled.
Americans were told to stay out of Mesopotamia,
out of crumbly pods, oily strands
and brittle stalks, to face adversity.
Never forget how well we did out of the mines of Uzbekistan
and Kyrgyzstan, and all the trodden earth
that has formed along the Silk Roads.
Jane Monach