A Den of Snakes copyright 2013, Paul Hawkins A tyrant of a cruel, hot land Would hold his audience, and

to each supplicant command he bow before a den of pampered snakes, and leaving unfulfilled he bow again. The obvious intent was threat; Yet in this act he sowed a revolution's seed, such that, when he cowered in his lowest halls, in mortal fear behind deserted walls, those that seized him marched him to the pit and with no small satisfaction threw him in. And this small episode, in telling, made the revolution grand until the bread grew scarce again, and the liberators grew like him. And Bedouins would say, when they decamped, The world is repetition, words, and sand.