The Burning of Nineveh | A Ballad of 612 BC

"In the year when the lion was slain, six hundred and twelve before the Son, there fell a city that drank the plain, and the Tigris ran black with the sun." Ninua. Nineveh. The great city. One hundred gates. A library of clay tablets. The house of the gods. The lion of Assyria. Forty days, or a thousand years — Jonah spoke, and we laughed. But the word of the Lord is a slow, slow wheel, and the wheel has turned at last. "We were the iron, we were the wolf, we were the hand and the sword. And the hand was cut, and the wolf was slain, and the iron returned to the ore." A ballad of 612 BC. The city that drank the plain, now the world's ash and mire."