Babylon

Apparently ancient Babylon has been damaged by the war... no surprise. Yet more barbarians.

I've never been much at memorizing; the only passage I ever learned by heart was from Shelley, one quoted in Eliot's The Cocktail Party. I still remember it:

"... Ere Babylon was dust,
The magus Zoroaster, my dead child,
Saw his own image walking in the garden.
That apparition, sole of men, he saw.
For know, there are two worlds of life and death,
One that which thou beholdest; but the other
Is underneath the grave, where do inhabit
The shadows of all forms that think and live,
Till death unite them, and they part no more."

And, in typing it out, I realize that it means even more to me now than it did when I memorized it, nearly four decades ago....