Societies and Empires reconstruct themselves
If not proactively, then cut like the Grand Canyon.
Shogun leads to shogun
To the sun and back.
Dynasty to dynasty
Great Wall to Mao to Tiananmen Square.
Genghis Khan from son to son
To Kublai Khan and gone.
Hindus to untouchables to Sikhs
Maharajas to East India to Gandhi and Kashmir.
Mohammed to Quran
Sunni and Shia to burqa.
Pyramid to pyramid to Nile
King Tut to the Sahara to Suez.
Athens and Sparta to Troy and Homer
Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides to Socrates, Plato and Aristotle
The Parthenon and Alexander the Great to Rome.
Caesar to Augustus to the Fall
Law, roads and aqueducts to the Colosseum, Trevi Fountain and the Vatican.
Henry VIII to Elizabeth to Shakespeare
Sun never sets to Churchill to London.
Revolution, Declaration and Abolition
To Gold Rush, Wounded Knee and Spanish American.
K cubed, Greenwood and Civil Rights
Two World Wars, Marshall and MacArthur
To Kennedy, King, Kennedy, Viet Nam and Iraq.
Moscow, Tolstoy, Lenin and Stalin
To Afghanistan, Gorbachev and the Berlin Wall.
The Cold War
Being surrounded by bad vibes
Two lonely ships at sea.
But not even Everest is too high
If you have the dream.
“You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
“Still I Rise” by Maya Angelou
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.“