Haiku 061609

horses perking
where hills rise and fall...
bugle call

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Recently, we read the following:




New York Times: “Defiance Grows as Iran’s Leader Sets Vote Review” by Robert F. Worth and Nazila Fathi

“Hundreds of thousands of people marched in silence through central Tehran on Monday to protest Iran’s disputed presidential election in an extraordinary show of defiance from a broad cross section of society, even as the nation’s supreme leader called for a formal review of results he had endorsed two days earlier.

“Having mustered the largest antigovernment demonstrations since the 1979 revolution, and defying an official ban, protesters began to sense the prospect — however slight at the moment — that the leadership’s firm backing of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had wavered.

“The massive outpouring was mostly peaceful. But violence erupted after dark when protesters surrounded and attempted to set fire to the headquarters of the Basij volunteer militia, which is associated with the Revolutionary Guards, according to news agency reports. At least one man was killed, and several others were injured in that confrontation….

“Protesters were especially enraged that Mr. Ahmadinejad on Sunday dismissed them as nothing more than soccer fans who had just lost a game and as ‘dust.’ One demonstrator fired off a Twitter message, one of thousands of brief electronic dispatches that kept the outside world up-to-the-minute on the protests, proclaiming, ‘Ahmadinejad called us Dust, we showed him a sandstorm.’

“Earlier Monday, Ayatollah Khamenei … called for the Guardian Council to conduct an inquiry into the opposition’s claims that the election was rigged and then had that announcement repeated every 15 minutes on Iranian state radio throughout the day. It was a rare reversal….

“Nevertheless, his announcement could not calm the anger of the people…. Hours later, a broad river of people in Tehran … marched slowly from Revolution Square to Freedom Square for more than three hours … many of them wearing the signature bright green ribbons of Mr. Moussavi’s campaign and holding up their hands in victory signs….”


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And we thought:

....From "dust" to "sandstorm" -- after long-drawn-out, incremental changes, a sudden qualitative change....