Nostradamus, guest blogger, speaks elliptically, but only for effect, for he knows the future and the past, though he is unclear about the present. Nonetheless, the sage, the seer, the great one, sees the Persian Empire aglow as an Asian peninsula explodes, and a Syrian potentate expresses regrets as the sand beneath his feet turns to glass and the Afghan sky turns dark with flocks of man-made birds. 

Dear leader’s missiles will inflate

The danger faced by neighbor state

While mullahs watch the tension grow

And wonder when the thing will blow

The Pashtun border will be drawn

With Afghan leader as its pawn

Drones and worker bees will fly

And predators will fill the sky

Anointed one will now address

Syrian ophthalmologist to press

The Mid-East health and wonder why

They cannot both see eye to eye