Something about all that space, created, seemingly in the middle of nothing, sparks the first notion of heightened language in one’s mind.
It could be a question worthy of rhetoric, a personal conundrum, or an insight attempted. It can’t just be description of sheer landscape, no matter how extraordinary. It has to reflect on the human situation, or a heart all too human.
Whenever we’re confronted by expanse, under clear blue sky, it is human foible to think we are insignificant. Nay, we are here, we are stepping into place, upon old ground, amidst stones that have been carved and wrought into mythical shape by human hands.
Amazing ancestors did this. Oh, millennia ago. This is Persepolis, former citadel of sophistication as the very heart of the cradle of civilization. Persepolis. The City of Persians.
The names Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes — each one billed as “the Great” and hailed as a “King of Kings” — we recall from a boyhood of history lessons, of names and dates that attended the romance of earthly conduct: exploration, discovery, conflict, conquest, ambition, vision, empire…
Once listed among the “lost cities” from the ancient world, Persepolis beckons as a place name of allure. An hour’s drive by tourist bus, or 70 kilometers northeast of Shiraz, the ruins of the ceremonial capital of the Achaemenid Empire (circa 550-330 BCE) lie in a desolate plain in the Fars province of Iran.
The weather is very dry early in October. The sun is searing hot overhead, especially towards high noon, as we trudge excitedly towards the fabled desideratum of a destination. But no sweat ever forms on our brows. Our throats get parched. Our imagination is soaked in recall and reinvention.
From a distance, we espy the first slender pillars, random as imagined rows once forming a colonnade. Our steps quicken as we approach what appear to be massive ramparts. There is a great wall and great stairways, twin ones leading up to the northern and southern corners of what must have been well-defended city.
We imagine men on horseback thumping up the symmetrical stairways that rise some 20 meters to reach a great terrace: blocks of stone on a level vantage for scanning the surroundings, from ochre plains to ochre mountains.
Our poet’s sensors turn as sharp as the sun. We see, hear, smell and taste spectacle. Greatness is all about us; we are in the midst of past glory, so distant as to have been subject to cycles, periods, epochs, eras. Not only has this ancient city seen epic fail and colossal fade; it has been reborn again and again with constant rediscovery.
Every troop of tourists that now marches through the walking routes of Persepolis must add to its myth and legend.
Some graffiti may be seen on walls of limestone and dark marble. The text, in various languages, complement Zoroastrian symbols and images, as of the familiar lion, representing the sun, in perennial battle with the bull, representing the earth.
Upon the ruins of Persepolis did an army of poets once march in October light, in 2011, and marveled, and imagined, and recreated language itself.
It was on the seventh day of the Second Iranian and International Poets’ Congress that we had our dalliance with time and place, and eventually with recorded history. After four nights in Tehran and a couple in Shiraz, it was imperative for our hosts to take us to the ruins — bragging rights to history.
Here was where, in 1971, the then Shah of Iran had hosted a grand global party that included Imelda Marcos as guest, for the 2500-year celebration of Iran’s monarchy. Eight years later, that monarchy came to an end. On the same year, 1979, Persepolis happened to be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Ironies in place, indeed.
Persepolis is known to have been established by Darius the First when Persia ruled half the world, around 500 BCE. The King of Kings envisioned the place as the ceremonial center of his dynasty. But French archaeologist Andre Godard, who excavated Persepolis in the 1930s, submits that it was Darius I’s predecessor, Cyrus the Great, who had chosen the site.
The earliest remains of Persepolis date from around 515 BCE, when Darius began the construction of the dual stairway, now known as the Persepolitan Stairway, as well as the vast terrace and subsequently the great palaces, including the Apadana Palace and the Hall of a Hundred Columns. Other notable structures were completed during the reign of his son Xerxes the Great, such as The Gate of Nations and the Hadish Palace.
We stand on the yard at the top of the great stairway, surveying the 360-degree view. We go close to a large block of limestone to check how it’s fitted to the next. We stand back and admire the great terrace, all of 125,000 square meters, we are told. We learn that it has been partly cut out of a mountain, Kuh-e Rahmet, or “the Mountain of Mercy,” while the rest of its foundation was filled up with soil and heavy rock until the entire area became level, with sewage tunnels dug underground, and an elevated cistern for storing water carved out of the foot of the mountain.
Fifteen pillars had remained of the colossal buildings that stood on this terrace, with three more pillars re-erected in time for that grand bash of 1971, well before the revolution.
Continually awed, we proceed south towards the ruins of The Gate of All Nations, where four large columns still stand, albeit broken in parts. The entrance led to what was once a grand hall for receiving subjects of the empire. Standing by the threshold is a pair of bulls called Lamassus, with the heads of bearded men. Another pair stands opposite, with wings and what is called a Persian head or “Gopät-Shäh.”
The power of the former empire becomes the subject of conversation. This is a special tour group, after all, made up of over 40 poets from 30 countries — so that each one reflects on something other than what the energetic tour guide and interpreters may be saying by way of information.
Ricky de Ungria and I nod upon catching some tidbit of how an inebriated Alexander the Great set fire to Persepolis on the dare of a harlot named Thais, who “said that for Alexander it would be the finest of all his feats in Asia if he joined them in a triumphal procession, set fire to the palaces, and permitted women’s hands in a minute to extinguish the famed accomplishments of the Persians.”
Historians also say that Alexander had taken vengeance for the earlier destruction of Greek temples by the Persians. Whatever the motive, the man from Macedonia certainly rendered the capital of Persia into ruins.
And it is among ruins where poets may espy resplendence of a sort — maybe in the aridity of the moment, or the sight of a white Monobloc chair propped up against a fallen column, or of soldiers in fatigues resting in the shade provided by a pit stop of a souvenir cum coffee shop.
Here, too, is where I rest for a while, and ponder. On my moment’s environment, and what it all meant, and what it all suggested. On my fate as poet, having taken the magic carpet ride to Persepolis, apparently a better alternative to joining the US Navy in order to see the world. On the way we manage to flit from habitat to habitat, in this day and age.
I think I espy Ricky climbing up a hill towards the sepulchers of kings. He is a familiar buddy, but it is an uncommon sight. He is a poet, Filipino, who has trod upon Persepolis.