Beauty and Obliteration

The Mongols surrounded the walls of Baghdad like a plague of deadly fireflies but he was too busy writing a love poem to care.

A silver rind of moon hung in the night like a child’s toy as he, the Sufi poet, wrote with a reed pen — a qalam — on a patch of papyrus.

He knew in his heart that neither he nor the city nor the poem would survive, but one has to do something when waiting for the end.

He jots the final words: I was here and then I wasn't and life was always beautiful.