The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz

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There were no lions any more. There had been lions once. Sometimes in the shimmer of the heat on the plains the motion of their running still flickered on the dry wind — tawny, great, and quickly gone. Sometimes the honeycoloured moon shivered to the silence of a ghost-roar on the rising air.

There were no chariots any more. The chariots, windbereft and roadless in the night, slept with their tall wheels hushed in the tomb of the last king.

The ruins of the king’s palace had been dug out of the ground. There was a chain-link fence all around the citadel where the palace buildings, the courtyards, the temples and the tombs had been excavated. There were a souvenir shop and a refreshment stand near the gates.

The columns and the roof beams, fallen and termitehollowed, had been labelled and cleared away. Jackals hunted among them no more. Where snakes and lizards had sunned themselves the daylight came through the skylights in the roof of the new building that enclosed the great hall where the hunting of the king was carved in stone.

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