Coins
My caravan starts in the hostel on Francouzská,
coins knitted on ringent window-cill
3 stories up - one slip and the street owns my soft-fiscal music;
3 stories up - one slip and the street owns my soft-fiscal music;
I continue this tale,
San Francisco, Chancellor Hotel,
nickels stacked like hunchbacks in the wardrobes tautened cubby;
San Francisco, Chancellor Hotel,
nickels stacked like hunchbacks in the wardrobes tautened cubby;
When it's finders keepers, and the coins' narrative
stops,
Crusaders, Bedouins
somewhere, place coins on their sacred mount, the narrative's zinc
Crusaders, Bedouins
somewhere, place coins on their sacred mount, the narrative's zinc
orated through
the sprints of sunlight, in Francouzská,
San Francisco, fingerprints touching, hearing the tales of left-behind change
the sprints of sunlight, in Francouzská,
San Francisco, fingerprints touching, hearing the tales of left-behind change
Francouzská is a street in Praha that contains a number of hostels. The Chancellor is a boutique hotel on Union Square in San Francisco, California; built in anticipation of the Panama Pacific International Exposition of 1915, at 15 stories it was the city's tallest building when it opened in 1914. A tazza is a wide, shallow bowl on a tall stem.
ReplyDeleteThe Badawi ("desert dwellers", Bedouin) were Arabic-speaking nomads who were traditionally notorious raiders. In the 11th century the 3 most important tribal groups divided the unclutivatad areas of al-Sham amongst themselves: the the Banu Kalb took the region between Aleppo and Ana, the Banu Tayy between Ramla and Egypt, and the Banu Kalb the Damascus area. This agreement coincided with the beginning of the Crusades, initiated by pope Urbanus II in 1095; the Franks defeated Muslim forces and established their own states (the County of Edessa, the Principality of Antioch, the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and the County of Tripoli). The Crusaders called the badawi "Arabs" (they called the settled peoples, the hadir, "Saracens"). Bedouin allegiances shifted constantly between the Christians and Muslims during the period. Edessa (modern Şanlıurfa, Turkey, fell in 1144; Jerusalem (in modern Israel) was mostly destroyed in 1187, though the kingdom was restored at Acre (Akka, Israel) in 1192; Antioch (Antakya, Turkey) lasted until 1268; Tripoli (Tarabulus, Lebanon) survived until 1289; the fall of Acre in 1291 marked the end of the Crusades.