4 hours ago
(This post was last modified: 4 hours ago by RiverNotch.)
Namibia and Botswana
Consider these two desert countries, neither
having much value in terms of their position
nor (when first by their colonial masters
found) in terms of nature's hardly hidden
gifts, today more stable than their neighbors
yet only one's more prosperous, the poorer
still caught up in the games its masters played,
facing first genocide then apartheid,
the richer completely superfluous---the former
never within its borders finding wealth,
the latter after freedom striking gems.
Stability is simply never catching
so much attention that what greedy empires
cast you a lurid glance still leave your borders
meek and organic, free from ethnic strife,
and what lands lie between them scarcely scoured,
whereas prosperity is just as simply
the luck of the draw, the proper set of cards
dealt at the proper time by a proper hand.
History, as it is, has little greatness
except in its consequences, in the burdens
carried by its survivors and their offspring.
Consider these two desert countries, neither
having much value in terms of their position
nor (when first by their colonial masters
found) in terms of nature's hardly hidden
gifts, today more stable than their neighbors
yet only one's more prosperous, the poorer
still caught up in the games its masters played,
facing first genocide then apartheid,
the richer completely superfluous---the former
never within its borders finding wealth,
the latter after freedom striking gems.
Stability is simply never catching
so much attention that what greedy empires
cast you a lurid glance still leave your borders
meek and organic, free from ethnic strife,
and what lands lie between them scarcely scoured,
whereas prosperity is just as simply
the luck of the draw, the proper set of cards
dealt at the proper time by a proper hand.
History, as it is, has little greatness
except in its consequences, in the burdens
carried by its survivors and their offspring.