Historical
the alliance road (prequel)
Prequel: The Alliance Road
(Levantine Chronicle — Prelude)
Croesus still wears his crown,
the Pactolus still runs gold,
but eastward the horizon darkens.
Messengers ride from Sardis,
hooves drumbeat the spine of the world —
through Cilician gates,
past Tyre’s purple looms,
down the coast where cedars lean to the sea.
In Gaza’s dust they change horses,
in Pelusium’s shadow they bow to the Pharaoh.
Gold meets gold,
and the bargain is struck:
Lydia and Egypt,
two suns to hold back the rising east.
The Levant listens —
its markets thick with rumour,
its ports weighing the wind.
Phoenician oars dip in and out of the tide,
carrying news faster than any envoy.
In Yehud, the elders speak softly:
alliances are walls built far away,
but the armies that test them
march through your own fields.
The road is busy now —
grain for the Nile,
timber for the palaces of Sardis,
and in the other direction,
whispers of a king in Persia
who does not wait for spring to make war.
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corridor of empires
Corridor of Empires
(A Levantine Chronicle)
Croesus falls —
golden Sardis quiet under Persian boots,
the western buffer broken.
From the Pactolus to the Halys,
the road bends south,
its dust already scented with cedar and myrrh.
Babylon still holds the river cities,
Judah still dreams in exile,
but the tide is turning:
Cyrus takes the gates without a battle,
and the edict rides the wind
back to Jerusalem’s stones.
The Levant listens —
a strip of earth between sea and desert,
its harbours open to Phoenician sails,
its caravan routes stitched
to the looms of Egypt and Anatolia.
Every army must pass here,
every god must learn the names of its hills.
Persia rules with satrap’s seal and royal road,
until the horsehair helmets of Macedon
spill down from the north.
Alexander drinks from its wells,
leaves Greek in the mouths of its markets,
and marches on to the Indus.
Rome comes like a tide without ebb,
paving the coast with stone,
naming its provinces,
planting its eagles in the courtyards of temples.
The corridor endures —
a prize, a tax, a prophecy.
Centuries turn:
Byzantine chant,
Arab call to prayer,
Crusader hymn,
Ottoman drum.
The Levant remains the narrow throat
through which the world swallows its own history.
And still the dust remembers
the day Croesus fell,
when the road from Sardis bent south,
and the corridor learned again
that no empire passes without leaving
its shadow in the stones.
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