The Danse Macabre

The dance of nations’ diplomacy is always underscored by the drums of war but rarely before has this dance been so evocative of Death.

Gothic Belly Dancer
The Dance with Iran Is A Danse Macabre

There is little doubt that dance we’re in with Iran over their nuclear weapons program is a Dance of Death. This is largely because Obama and the other players from the West don’t even seem to realize that Iran is dancing to completely different music, in instruments, meter, tempo, and even scale it is written and played in.

Dance when you’re broken open.
Dance when you’ve torn the bandage off.
Dance in the middle of fighting.
Dance in your blood.
Dance when you’re perfectly free.
Struck, the dancer hears a tambourine inside her,
like a wave that crests into foam at the very top,
Begins.
Maybe you don’t hear that tambourine,
or the tree leaves clapping time.
Close the ears on your head,
that listen mostly to lies and cynical jokes.
There are other things to see, and hear.
Music. Dance.
A brilliant city inside your soul!

— Jalāl ad-DÄ«n Muhammad RÅ«mÄ«

And so we shall cavort and gyrate to our songs as the Iranians shall to their own strains. I think though that their music is stronger to them and stranger to us than ours can ever again be and that their dancers in their terrible beauty shall best amuse Death on Her thrown.

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