Beirut, Tripoli, Byblos, Tyre … via Rudyard Kipling
Travelling to Brisbane I noticed a new (co-authored) Arthur C. Clarke novel in one of the airport bookshops.
Arthur C. Clarke is one of my favourite sci. fi. authors and has written one of my favourite novels of all time, The City and the Stars.
Anyway, I flicked through and found this evocative quote he uses at the beginning of the book. Quite a round-about way of explaining how I came upon this quote which reminds me of Lebanon and the imperative to take the long view and keep our hopes and dreams and efforts going, even and especially amid all the imperial hubris, carnage and suffering …
Cities and Thrones and Powers
Stand in Time’s eye,
Almost as long as flowers,
Which daily die.
But, as new buds put forth
To glad new men,
Out of the spent and unconsidered Earth,
The Cities rise again.
— Rudyard Kipling
PS Not forgetting Baghdad and other cities in Iraq, Palestine and Afghanistan
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