Beauty in Kingdom
Courtney Druz The length of the coastline is infinite if measured with an infinitely small ruler. You can start anywhere: the rocks break down to smaller and smaller rocks, the ghost crab crawls a pattern on the sand the same as on a map of the whole shore; the sand is full of boulders for the mites. The mad king’s harbor, “larger than the Piraeus,” limitless in beauty, concrete wonder, shored a sea still infinite in limit, rough with pattern under the glass of scale. Blood filled the sand of the arena; its sea-soaked walls couldn’t hold it back. “What a king has built, a king will destroy.” Quotation 1: from Flavius Josephus’s account of Herod’s building the harbor at Caesarea in 21 B.C.E.; Quotation 2: attributed to the Mamluk sultan upon capturing Caesarea from the Crusaders in 1265 and razing its walls. |
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About the Author:
Courtney Druz is the author of several books of poetry including The Light and the Light and her forthcoming volume, The Hannah Senesh Set, from which this poem is drawn. She has worked in architecture and graphic design, and her poems have appeared in a variety of journals. She lives in Israel. Find her on the web here.
Courtney Druz is the author of several books of poetry including The Light and the Light and her forthcoming volume, The Hannah Senesh Set, from which this poem is drawn. She has worked in architecture and graphic design, and her poems have appeared in a variety of journals. She lives in Israel. Find her on the web here.