Historiography

When the history is written,

in binary, or sentient plasma,

in some far off time,

by the unseen hand,

will it be Greek lies,

like those of Ctesias

about the last King of Assyria?

 

Will our hard-drives and servers

be treated as the man from Cnidus

used the cunieform sources,

before creating his own version of events

centuries before his birth?

Perhaps he couldn’t read them,

perhaps he didn’t read them.

 

For there was no Sardanapalus

debauching maids and youths

almost three millennia ago,

though Nineveh might serve

as Weimar-Republic Berlin

and the calumnied king

might be some composite rake.

 

And our own times might seem

as different from the truth

as any potentate’s promise,

given as capriciously

as ever it is broken.

Some still say “It is written”,

and believe it to be true.

 

There might be some figure

blond or orange, profligate

for the times, though it depends

what customs will be

in such a distant, unknown future,

as to how they judge them.

Jesters as kings, it might be said.

 

There may be rich despots,

malevolent malefactors:

wealth for all according

to their greed, alms for none

ignoring dire need and want.

But we were speaking of Ctesias’s

Assyrian Myth written on parchment.

 

So it may be called golden

and glorious, which lie would

outshine even the Greek’s

about Sardanapalus.