Into the palace in the pool I tossed
my wishful coin. That day, our last
together, my eyes were little scavengers,
looming over your body in the pool
as though it were already dead, your face afloat
above the minted faces, the sour taste
of metal in my mouth. . . .
After each conquest,
Alexander the Great ordered the enemy’s coinage
melted and recast in his own image.
That’s how I put it now in my new language,
where history is written in the simple past
and laid to rest inside a book, like the soul
inside the body, waiting for a stranger’s
hand to pull the silver from its throat.
The Persian Wars
Armen Davoudian
Armen Davoudian is the author of The Palace of Forty Pillars, forthcoming in early 2024. He grew up in Isfahan, Iran, and is a PhD candidate in English at Stanford University.
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