Behistunskaa Nadpis-: Armenia

Go there, if you dare. Run your finger along the third panel, seventh column. Feel the bird’s beak. That is the real inscription—the one no king could read.

The swallow flies east every spring. Past Lake Urmia. Past the broken bridge at Van. It lands on a khachkar that is not yet carved, in a kingdom that will call itself Hayastan long after Elamite is a ghost. behistunskaa nadpis- armenia

He did not copy the swallow.

When the chisel slipped—deliberately, they said—I left a crack running down the neck of the kneeling rebel. The crack is still there. Rain found it. Then lichen. Then a British officer in 1835, pressing paper against the stone, copying my master’s lie. Go there, if you dare