|
"lighten and uplift
them, so that they may soar on the wings of the Divine verses"
-Baha'u'llah
|
|
|
To the romantic poets of the British Isles in the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries there were four
centres of interest when they turned their attention outside
their homeland: France, Switzerland, Italy and Greece.
For the Baha'i who lives in Australia or indeed in any one of
many of the countries of the world and who writes a great deal
of poetry as I do, there are four places or centres of
interest to which I and they can and do turn: Iran, Israel,
America and a disparate array of sites across the surface of
the earth. Collectively, it seems to me, these various sites
amount to a fourth place or centre which is the globe itself.
-
Ron Price with thanks to David Daiches and John Flower,
Literary Landscapes of the British Isles: A Narrative Atlas,
Paddington Press Ltd., NY, 1979, p.126.
|
There's
a core, of course,
which gives us all a common
thread, a shared line
on our modern world.
In Iran where
it all began,
in America where they put
the order together in its
first form before the Plan
spread it around the world.
And now, in
Israel, where
there is a call out to Zion,
where my life feels as if
it possesses a sacrifice
to some embodiment of
all that my life stands for.
It embellishes
my life
with special reverence
and gives me, subtlety,
a shield, with this poetry,
from the slings and arrows
of outrageous fortune. |
|
Ron Price
22 June 2003
|
|
|
|
|
|
