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Monday, March 02, 2015

CONTEXT

by George Held





Barbarians come and go
with history's ebb and flow.

IS are the new iconoclasts
in a long line of enthusiasts.

Remember the Alexandria library
built by the pharoah Ptolemy?

Among those who burned it
was a pope of the Coptic

persuasion, 300 years
after Julius Caesar's

arson there. So remember,
while some wait for the barbarians,

others welcome them with honor
and others react with horror.

History's all about context:
burnt books precede new texts.


George Held, a regular contributor to The New Verse News, has a new book out from Poets Wear Prada, Culling: New & Selected Nature Poems.