They have suffered a metamorphosis more terrible than just exile on the Black Sea or Gregor's uncomfortable bed now that he's a cockroach. They have suffered the anguish of living now not then. The exiled one finds himself in the streets of Baghdad looking for a brothel to stop the invader's bombs from wracking his ears. This love artist travels in drag, donning the veil to avoid being taken into the Republican Guard, though he has been attracted to those black and white costumes the Feyadeen wear to become anonymous killing machines. On the streets he finds no refuge but bumps into a recently transformed compatriot, that ut picture poesis one who's now in love with a camel, so he watches a while as the two hump in the street totally oblivious to the SCUD's as they fly toward some damned tyrant's palace. And there's Clodia's lovesick nuisance carrying her pet parrot as he sings of his lust to a bird since she will have nothing to do with him. This pet-carrying man looks crazed, lost on streets whose names have been obliterated by strays chaotically searching for human shields and finding only empty by-ways. And so the exiled one finds himself face to face with the bucolic one, the best of the bunch, who seems totally out of it in more ways than one. The sand storms have hidden his sheep so well that he knows he will never farm again. This foreign landscape might as well be Hades. The bucolic one has been forced to become urbane. He has taken to stealing golden icons from mosques. With no brothels in sight & shy; perhaps Baghdad never had any & shy; our exiled one heads out of the city only to encounter a final, sad one & shy; the last great pagan poet of Rome. He seems to be eating money. His lips drip with gold washed down with oil & shy; not that of his beloved olives but a sinister oil he's not familiar with. Disgusted, the love artist leaves the devastated city, wondering who will ultimately re-build what was once beautiful hanging gardens.
        

Copyright © Gary Mitchner, 2004. All Rights Reserved.