The History of The River that Divides Iran and Iraq

History by Robert Lowell

History has to live with what was here,
clutching and close to fumbling all we had--
it is so dull and gruesome how we die,
unlike writing, life never finishes.
Abel was finished; death is not remote,
a flash-in-the-pan electrifies the skeptic,
his cows crowding like skulls against high-voltage wire,
his baby crying all night like a new machine.
As in our Bibles, white-faced, predatory,
the beautiful, mist-drunken hunter's moon ascends--
a child could give it a face: two holes, two holes,
my eyes, my mouth, between them a skull's no-nose--
O there's a terrifying innocence in my face
drenched with the silver salvage of the mornfrost.




There's a division , something that splits a land, the disputed Indes Valley, in half. Splits two peoples in half. Splits a plain of hills and sands and rocks and dunes and praries and cities.
A List of Things I think of as a barrier:
1. metal
2. bars
3. harsh and man- made.

Never a river. The idea of it just intrigued me. A moving body of water that can cause so much trouble. Trouble for even people that live half way across the ocean.