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Rain in Mandalay
I had been lost sight of until...

By BURNTOAST
January 16, 2002
The Iranian

I was a prisoner of war.

They caught me in Burma.

I held some nails in my hand a crown of thorns

around my wrist.

Unmixed with awe.

Fearing suffering in the midst of sins of the

earth.

Becoming an unidentified figure alfresco on the

Sistine Chapel.

Caressing La Dolce Vita.

The hotel room in Rome was filled with the good

things of life.

An Italian bed trimmed in gold leaf covered in

damask.

A Venitian mirror.

Asparagus soup served in a tureen with a ladle.

Saffron.

The union of two stars Atair and Vega in the

autumn festival.

The birth of Venus.

A lantern on the Kyoto bridge.

Rain on the window pane.

I had been lost sight of until I turned up at the

sale of prisoners of war at the Berlin Museum in 1884.

I was taken on a trip round paradise by Dante

escorted by angels. Instrument of the devil.

The storm passed.

A light rain fell unexpectedly as I reached the

adoration of the magi.

I was hanged and burned at the stake in the Piazza

della Signoria hitting the nail on the head.

Soaked to the skin waiting for the storm to pass

I watched the assassins kill Giuliano de Medici and

wound his brother Lorenzo while at the cathedral in

Florence in 1478.

The assassins were hanged by the neck in a building

allongside the Palazzo del Signoria.

The accomplices were hung by their feet.

The memories faded.

In 1492 Lorenzo the magnificent died.

My popularity as a painter began to decline.

Changing fashions were favoring new painters like

Titian, Michelangelo and Raphael outlasting the gilded

Renaissance of wild roses, grapes, silver eucalyptus

leaves with champaign.

Gasping for breath I made a sorbet of roses in

September dusk on lace made in white washed cottages

in Ireland where Chinese cliff swallows virtually

disappeared from view .

Interest in me revived only in the 21st century

with a yellow oriental gaze.

BUT IT WAS TOO LATE.

The heat in Burma had turned me into eyelet lace

with a needle, bobbins, bones and pins.

When it rained in Mandalay.

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