WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.250 align:middle line:90% 00:00:02.250 --> 00:00:05.625 align:middle line:90% This is called "A Lesser God." 00:00:05.625 --> 00:00:07.500 align:middle line:84% I don't think I got the beginning right, yet, 00:00:07.500 --> 00:00:09.930 align:middle line:84% but I like some of the rest of it. 00:00:09.930 --> 00:00:12.480 align:middle line:90% 00:00:12.480 --> 00:00:14.340 align:middle line:90% "A Lesser God." 00:00:14.340 --> 00:00:18.150 align:middle line:84% In my old backyard, a 200-year-old stone wall 00:00:18.150 --> 00:00:23.100 align:middle line:84% separates what once was a farm from what once was forest. 00:00:23.100 --> 00:00:27.300 align:middle line:84% And in a limestone ossuary outside Jerusalem 00:00:27.300 --> 00:00:30.180 align:middle line:84% a 2000-year-old wall separates what 00:00:30.180 --> 00:00:34.440 align:middle line:84% once were the living from what always are the dead. 00:00:34.440 --> 00:00:38.230 align:middle line:84% Mesopotamia, here at the crossroads of the world, 00:00:38.230 --> 00:00:40.830 align:middle line:84% our guide walks the ruined perimeter 00:00:40.830 --> 00:00:45.660 align:middle line:84% of a wall 5,000 years old, and reads from a book. 00:00:45.660 --> 00:00:48.990 align:middle line:84% Deep in the sand like eons of layers. 00:00:48.990 --> 00:00:52.590 align:middle line:84% Fortresses built upon ruins of fortresses, 00:00:52.590 --> 00:00:56.070 align:middle line:84% and mud palaces, and plazas, and temples 00:00:56.070 --> 00:00:58.950 align:middle line:90% with altars stained with blood. 00:00:58.950 --> 00:01:01.480 align:middle line:84% "Here lay the greatest cities of the ancients," 00:01:01.480 --> 00:01:05.430 align:middle line:84% he recites, and points to a scattering of stones. 00:01:05.430 --> 00:01:09.630 align:middle line:84% He shrugs, this custodian of time and sand. 00:01:09.630 --> 00:01:10.950 align:middle line:90% "Was it plague? 00:01:10.950 --> 00:01:13.140 align:middle line:90% Barbarian invasion? 00:01:13.140 --> 00:01:16.410 align:middle line:90% Smugness of long aristocracy? 00:01:16.410 --> 00:01:18.930 align:middle line:84% Maybe the silk route followed the river, 00:01:18.930 --> 00:01:23.370 align:middle line:84% and the river was subject to a different god from man's." 00:01:23.370 --> 00:01:25.260 align:middle line:90% He shrugs again. 00:01:25.260 --> 00:01:26.400 align:middle line:90% I'm a poet. 00:01:26.400 --> 00:01:29.040 align:middle line:84% Which way to the booksellers market? 00:01:29.040 --> 00:01:33.090 align:middle line:84% And how were strangers treated in this place? 00:01:33.090 --> 00:01:34.230 align:middle line:90% I'm a Jew. 00:01:34.230 --> 00:01:36.960 align:middle line:84% Where did the 10 men assemble to read 00:01:36.960 --> 00:01:39.990 align:middle line:90% from the one book and dispute? 00:01:39.990 --> 00:01:43.800 align:middle line:84% "Your people worshipped other gods back then." 00:01:43.800 --> 00:01:45.420 align:middle line:90% What about the little guys? 00:01:45.420 --> 00:01:49.680 align:middle line:84% The slave who carried water and the slave who buried the dead. 00:01:49.680 --> 00:01:51.960 align:middle line:90% How did they fare here? 00:01:51.960 --> 00:01:54.480 align:middle line:84% "The city had 100 gates," he says. 00:01:54.480 --> 00:01:57.210 align:middle line:84% "One was for the water carriers." 00:01:57.210 --> 00:01:58.140 align:middle line:90% I stray. 00:01:58.140 --> 00:01:59.190 align:middle line:90% I walk around. 00:01:59.190 --> 00:02:02.220 align:middle line:84% I look to the stones and implore them, 00:02:02.220 --> 00:02:06.780 align:middle line:84% "I'd like, please, to speak with a local god. 00:02:06.780 --> 00:02:09.690 align:middle line:84% A lesser one would do just fine." 00:02:09.690 --> 00:02:12.705 align:middle line:90% A stone says, "Consider me. 00:02:12.705 --> 00:02:17.940 align:middle line:84% Though only a humbled shard at your feet, I once was a god-- 00:02:17.940 --> 00:02:21.390 align:middle line:84% two-headed lord of feast and famine. 00:02:21.390 --> 00:02:26.010 align:middle line:84% I lived in a temple lit by the moon's motions and the stars. 00:02:26.010 --> 00:02:29.190 align:middle line:84% Attended by priests from the seven Fates, 00:02:29.190 --> 00:02:32.910 align:middle line:84% and famed astrologers, deviners, and the aged, 00:02:32.910 --> 00:02:36.240 align:middle line:84% blue-skin, nomad, weather watchers. 00:02:36.240 --> 00:02:39.060 align:middle line:90% You, poet, look to thyself. 00:02:39.060 --> 00:02:41.250 align:middle line:90% You celebrate the little man-- 00:02:41.250 --> 00:02:43.590 align:middle line:90% his troubles, his joys. 00:02:43.590 --> 00:02:46.590 align:middle line:84% Can you make from him a cosmology, 00:02:46.590 --> 00:02:49.410 align:middle line:90% as I once did of the elements? 00:02:49.410 --> 00:02:52.800 align:middle line:84% Back when feasts led to our downfall, 00:02:52.800 --> 00:02:56.670 align:middle line:84% famine led us across the desert for 100 years 00:02:56.670 --> 00:03:00.330 align:middle line:84% to found another city that lasted a millennium. 00:03:00.330 --> 00:03:04.830 align:middle line:84% Now it, too, lies underground, though no less storied. 00:03:04.830 --> 00:03:10.290 align:middle line:84% You stand on a volume of sand surrounded by volumes of sand, 00:03:10.290 --> 00:03:13.740 align:middle line:84% and want to know how the little man fared. 00:03:13.740 --> 00:03:16.500 align:middle line:84% Ask me a better question than that." 00:03:16.500 --> 00:03:17.000 align:middle line:90%