A free adaptation and imaginative recreation based on "Akkadian Letters" in The Ancient Near East, Volume II, edited by James B. Pritchard, Princeton University Press, 1975, pages 174-187.
Act I
Destroy the evidence (the records)
Then and only then you can be sure, safe. Right
They creep out anyway like government secrets —
Don't bury them, imbecile,
Smash them to dust —
Itur-Adsu, governor of Nahor, to Zimri-Lim,
To the man from Shakka on eve of Ishtar month,
Malik-Dagan spoke his dream.
Did Yemen make peace with Mari?
They did not. Where is your report?
Without your report I cannot move against Yemen.
The dream:
The king of Yemen cooked in a fisherman's spit.
Not impressed?
Kibri Dagan, governor of Terqa, to Zimri-Lim,
Dagan and Ikrub-El safe and sound,
Everything safe and sound
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . It was a god. Do not rebuild your house by the river.
I've been ill so do not invest
Great credence in my visions, etc.
Kibri Dagan, governor of Terqa, to Zimri-Lim,
Ecstatic of Dagan, furthermore: the populace canvassed
Turned up a slave who had the exact same dream
About Mari, Terqa, Sagaratum. . .
He passed the responsibility on to me.
He said, ". . .
Kibri Dagan, governor of Terqa, to Zimri-Lim,
Ecastatic of Dagan, he said,
A man's wife muttered over her sacrifice to Ishtar,
Hurry write to the king, the god sent me,
They must make mortuary sacrifices
Dagan himself sends Hammurabi
To conquer Zimri-Lim. . .
If you efface the text it will not change the message.
You will remember, someone will find out,
Then everyone will find out.
Extatics of Dagan offer morturary sacrifices
To Yahdun-Lim, but now you are angry.
Kibri Dagan, governor of Terqa, to Zimri-Lim,
I have reported the exact poundage of the barley crop.
Moreover, your new gate does not satisfy me.
You have not enough numbers. We lament.
The harvest is poor. . . My neck is stiff. . .
Ecstatic of Dagan, your envoi wrote to me much confusion.
Under no circumstance must the sacrifice for the dead
be omitted. Dagan's seer went into trance,
He waited and the 14th passed. I deliberate. . .
Singularities, barbarisms, spelling errors everywhere,
Clearly a provincial!
If you hand over the cattle now, I will not exact retribution.
Hadad Kallassu, my provincial governor? Did I not give you a house?
Now, since I give you a house, I should not exact inheritance tax?
Who are Apilu to counsel disobedience to my will?
They appear constantly in your omens.
If in some future time every word of the apilum were true,
Would you not admit you protected your threshing floor first?
Tell me the word of apilum!
Do I not protect Abi-Melech?
Do I not protect Zu-Hadnim?
Mukannishum, your humble servant, sacrificed to Dagan
For your life. You see, you are still alive!
Babylon, you cannot stand against Zimri-Lim!
Mar-Ishtar, amabassador at large, from Zimri-Lim,
Greetings from Nabu and Bel!
Damqi son of the bishop of Akkad,
Exercising hegemony over the universe,
Esarhaddon, king of Assyria,
He and the queen. . . Shamash-shum-ukin,
Went to their fate in the mausoleum.
We performed the necessitated factual formulas,
Burning of the magical figurines,
House of ritual bathing,
House of dipping in water, etc.
Thus says the prophetess, igerrûm,
During the eclipse, the Akkadians, fearstruck,
And the queen mother,
Demanded assurance. Appoint the commoner
The king's substitute in anticipation of uprising.
He shall pour incense on censor-stands,
He shall offer sacrifices daily before the high altar,
He shall preside over the feast "greeting of the temple."
Act II
Speak to my Lord, I Shibtu daughter of Yarim-Lim, king of Aleppo,
Mistress to Zimri-Lim, place my report under his foot,
I dreamt of Ishme-Dagan's army of captives, igerrûm,
His horde of a thousand Scythic slaves,
Ripe for treason and treachery.
The haruspex analyzed the entrails of the vulture
Circling the temple of Dagan-Malik,
After it was shot out of the sky
By a thousand arrows of the king's guard.
I Shibtu, daughter of Yarim-Lim, king of Aleppo,
Your maid-servant do report. The cult prostitute went into a trance.
Ili-Khasnaya, ecstatic of Annunitum,
She will see what the goddess will do to this man.
His days are short. . .
I Shibtu, daughter of Yarim-Lim, king of Aleppo,
report first that Shelebum, ecastatic of Annunitum,
And dispatch to my Lord the hair and fringe of the cult player.
In short, there were portentious omens.
I Shibtu, daughter of Yarim-Lim, king of Aleppo,
Do report on last night's vigil.
O Zimri-Lim, even though you spurn me I forgive you,
Said Akhatum, the servant of Dagan-Malik,
Akhum, the priest of Dagan-Malik,
In the temple of Annunitum,
Did overhear treason whispered among your guards.
He shall deliver your enemies into your hands.
They do not yet suspect the substitute.
We continually retouch his make-up.
I Shibtu, daughter of Yarim-Lim, king of Aleppo, your mistress,
Faithfully bring my report to the king's bedroom.
Once again, Kakkalidi, ecstatic of Itur-Mer
In the temple of Itur-Mer,
Fell down screaming with a headache,
Her face turned color of a portentious hue,
Saying, "Two monstrous transports block the river,
Mari shall be carried off to Mari-El!"
Do you understand?
This morning, I Addu-Duri,
Standing by the gate of Belet-Ekallim,
Although I am a respectable woman of high position,
I was approached by Dada, priest of Ishtar-Pishra,
Inside the gate of Belet-Ekallim, he cried,
"Dagan, O Dagan, come back. Zimri-Lim must not leave Mari."
I offer you this my Lord. . .
I Addu-Duri, woman of high position,
Traversed to the temple of Itur-Mer,
Iddin-Ili, the priest of Itur-Mer
Was dead from poisoning. Take heed
My Lord, your enemies plot against you.
I have on good account from Belet-Biri
You should not go up again to the family house.
Your slave girl, the uprising was much discussed
In the king's harem. . .
I Shibatum, am come from Ilansura,
Vassalage of Mari, from the king's daughter,
Inibshina, who have been her trusted companion,
That is, Shibatum, the faithful companion
to the king's daughter, Inibshina,
In the vassalage of Mari, Ilansura,
The trusted companion, ever faithful Shibatum,
Beloved of Inibshina, the king's daughter
In distant Ilansura, vassalage of Mari. . .
Let the girl Tagidnate be summoned and questioned by the haruspex.
Innana, your maid servant speaks
I sent Kukkimkhiya to Rubben
In Ganibatum, but along the way she disappeared.
I suspect she was raped by Andariq,
For when I visited him her very image appeared with Sammetar.
But, "Until Zimri-Lim releases her," the goddess utters
Much confusion concerning the political situation,
But she says she knows who will win.
Addu-Duri, brings the king good news,
The dream of Timlu, your maid servant, from Kasapa
Yar'ib-Abba expelled her. Her dream
was full of white birds
Flying up from the Lake of Van.
It means the queen shall conceive tonight.
I Shibtu, daughter of Yarim-Lim, king of Aleppo,
Bring the report of Qishti-Diritim,
Prophet of Diritum, at the gate of the palace.
I place my report under the king's pillow.
I place my report under the king's head.
He is pleased. He sees the pattern of the tea leaves
Identical with the stars in the eastern quadrant.
It portends the king's plan is wise.
I did not hear what Asumum said to Ea,
Something about the dirt on the door-frame of the gate of Mari.
The gods and the goddesses drank.
I heard Ea say, "Spare the brickwork. And the commissioner."
Addu-Duri brings the king good news
From Isi-Akhu, prophet in Khishametim,
In the temple of Khishametum.
He looked into his glass globe at noon
And beheld the vision of your followers
Eating of your ram and drinking from your cup,
You shall be trampled down in the palace throne room.
Inibshina, ugbabtu-priestess of Adad
Daughter of Zimri-Lim, I come to you father,
Star of the city of Sharrakiya,
Father, I say to you, my Lord, listen to the words in the winds,
I know you exercise hegemony over the universe.
Please, we must escape Mari tonight or we die.
Do not listen to your eunuchs and your harem spies.
They do not know what is really going on.
The Star must guard himself!
Inibshina, daughter of Zimri-Lim, I come to you father,
My Lord, Shelebum, the cult player in the Mari public area
Who knows the astrology, he tells me true.
Now the qamatum of the Dagan at Terqua repeats,
The peace overtures of the man of Eshnunna are a deceit.
"Under the straw the water courses."
The winds carry the dust from the clouds rising from the horses
Of the army of Hammurabi.
We cannot resist Hammurabi's army. It comes.
He sees the clouds rising in the far eastern horizon.
He smells the dust from the clouds on the eastern horizon.
Act III
Mar-Ishtar to Esarhaddon, king of Assyria,
My Lord, the palace of Mari is in the harsh grip of Babylon.
Six hundred thousand of the populace were slaughtered.
The substitute king is killed. Zimri-Lim, the queen, daughters and sons,
Half his court, flee on horseback to the North.
Our spies tell us he reaches the people of the fire
Where he will be protected across the trans-Zagros route,
Through the lands of stinking Amurru,
Through the lands of ugly Hittites,
Through the lands of stupid Sutaeans,
Through the lands of fat Arabs to the king of Sarmats.
Mari is no more. By daylight, I recite the traditional formulas
Of the scribal guild. The apotropaic rituals are repeated.
The lamentations for the pacification of the gods are made.
The spell against malaria and other pestilences is spoken.
May peace be with the palaces of Ashur and Akkad.
Now Babylon wars with the hegemony of the universe.
The speaker in sections I, II, IV, and V is Gustav Mahler. In section III, the speaker is his brother Ernst who died in 1874 after a protracted illness. The quotations in sections III and IV refer to Mahler's letter to Josef Steiner of June 1879. The verse quotation between III and IV is a revised translation of Friedrich Rükert, "Nun seh'ich wohl, warum so dunkle flammen," which Mahler adapted as one of his "Kindertotenlieder." The title, "Herzog Ernst von Schwaben" derives from Ludwig Uhland's verse drama of the same name. Mahler wished to use it as a libretto for an opera, but it was never written.
I. Morning
I cried out after him,
"Ernst! Wait, Ernst! do not run so fast!"
And I could not help my misplaced fear
That Ernst might trip and fall.
II. Afternoon
I read to him.
The obsessive calm of his sick room
Stifled silence clings like dampness,
The drone of syllables uttered
With hesitant slowness
Lingers in the air,
Hollow sounds sucked in, enveloped
as though heard from another room.
I glimpse myself nearby rocking
In the mirror, watch my brother sleep,
Listen to his shallow breath,
Observe the movements of his closed eyes.
A pattern of wispy shadows
Flitting under his eyelids,
His soft blonde lashes dance
In the dim afternoon light.
III. Twilight
"Pale figures in my life pass before me
Like shadows of a long lost happiness. . ."
His air of pensive calm conceals
Rampaging thoughts of death and beyond
The terror and beauty of sorrow.
"Once more we walk through a familiar landscape."
He tells me that he dreamt a tragic opera
The overture a grand funeral march,
Entitled, "Herzog Ernst von Schwaben."
There he sits, eyes closed
Slender fingers pressed against his forehead,
He does not know that I am watching
The whirling storm that is his mind,
And how the darkness deepens around him.
"Now I know why once I found you gazing
Pure childlike love and silent longing
O Bright Eyes,
Twin suns in amber splendor blazing,
I knew not then
Dark mists my sight obscuring,
One glance from you,
Your tearful sad eyes glazing."
IV. Midnight
At the blackest hour of night
Dread slowly descends over us
Quietly poisoning the nerves
And strangling us
With mute, unmoving panic.
Then the moment of numbness,
A point between the ticks of the clock.
When nothing is
Prelude to the wave of nausea
And the welling up of regret.
We come to stand as this frail life
Totters on the brink of the abyss,
Clings in paralyzed terror
To a frame that lies gray and withered
Like a heap of dust rags.
"And among the discordant strains
I hear the voice of Ernst von Schwaben. . ."
V. Street Sonata
There stood before me
The old hurdy gurdy
Its whacky grotesqueness
Honking and tooting and
Clanging in gaudy mockery;
The monkey tipped his hat,
Held up the tin cup and bit the leash,
The organ grinder belched
And laughed up to the skies.
Come now, black breasted sparrow,
Dark stranger, you are welcome
To fly and fall in this world,
For here the young are crushed.
The swish of the jump rope
Is death's swinging scimitar,
The voice fallen silent in mid-song
Is but the hymn of the tomb.
The child's heedless play
Is a dance of death.
Expire in silent anguish, sorrow,
For none are spared that final breath of life.
His voice rises out of a distant past,
Of a cold and misty winter dusk,
Flickering shadows of gray and black
Silent against the light rain
Tapping window panes.
Out of the abyss of fifty years of time
This voice of quiet longing,
Far away, as an anonynous face
In an old newsreel.
"O Augen. . . O Augen. . ."
Sounds that drift down cobbled streets
Through the beveled glass of bay windows
Along dark facades of stone buildings,
Muffled fragmentary glimpses
Upon which, perhaps, one reflects
To capture the dying tone.
They came from north of Wista, under grey skies,
As cold and silent mist slept over the marshes
Above the tall grasses beyond the Warda,
Where dew drops cling to bare tree branches
Dripping down in long frozen spears of ice.
First came the Gotha out from Scandza
And the Gotland where the blood-red sun
Smoulders on the sky-line at midnight,
Where tall fir and birch trees breech the horizon
Growing into the cold light from the rocks of mountains,
Islands, the wind-whipped trees blown by the dry
West wind from the steppes beyond the Dnester.
The low moans of the souls of trees that wept
Brought dread into the hearts of men, to fester
Their frowns of brooding fear, their children cry
The blood-lust superstition bred west of Carpathia.
After, the tribe of Gods blown far from their wooden homes
By the north wind out from Norseland in tall ships.
As Athanric once crossed the frozen Dunarea
To ravage Sirmium, now again the hordes of Rurik
Descend on gleaming Rum in blind rapacious fury
A hundred rivers, shouldering their ships cross portages,
They came into the Euxine Sea from Dneper,
For gold and silver sailing to Byzantium.
A reply to David Waggoner
Sand and rocks, water all around
Out of the earthquake rift an ear canal
Turns into the cochlea,
Hammer and anvil of cities,
Hears out to the roaring ocean.
Religions have grown trying to convince
Us this gnarled extrusion is real,
Not row upon row of knots of atoms,
Twisted through the double vortex
Floating on an invisible sea of energy.
You point to a tree whimpering
and chirping and say, Life!
High up a windblasted ridge,
His torn crown snapping
His foot dry in the dirt,
Crying cormorant or for that matter
Ourselves, our hearts and mouths,
Our emotions each significant.
We starve, we have pain, we live
In our skin moving and breathing all
These molecules endlessly organizing every thing.
Under the sun bathing our fallacies
Like clams smiling at low tide,
Our women cook their bodies
And elect our little princes —
All these act like proofs.
The adage goes that genius
Shows the world its heartfelt thought
Is right, but as this world goes dark,
The vacuum all around inside us
Occupies the spaces.
I shatter, crush quartz
Crystal menthol eucalyptus
Drops in vaporous mist,
Broken bottle glass
Cut cracked edges
Gently kiss my lips,
Kill me with intelligence,
Feel so like an ingression
Of the anaesthetist's
Vision. In a marble slicker
Of drizzle in the glossy
Moonlight, sounds tease,
Taste the soft grey
In the shivering static,
Hiss a shimmering ecstasy
Over the sidewalk, and
As the crash of ocean waves
In sand is a sizzling voice
upon the water, stillness
Is the voice of the heavens
As it is upon this earth,
Breathing in this ether
Of dryice steaming an erasure,
The breathtaking vacancy
Of spaces between galaxies.
At the crest of a sine curve
This green oscilloscopic eye
Induces myocardial arrest,
I'll get some small artillery
And short it out.
The oven signs in a sweep of beams,
A scrambling of molecular
Heat sizzles through steel seams,
I will irradiate this thing,
Feed in its terror.
Announcers monitor their needles
In consoled maximum dosages,
The signal is clearly static,
I speak underworldly accents
And singe their wires.
The vertical will not hold, it blinks
Slips, rolls ribbons of brilliant
Blushing interference on the screen,
I'll find my sunglasses
And observe this.
Of patterns in a bluish nightmare glow,
I should also mention in passing that
I waved when I walked past you
Silently, a perturbation of gravity
Signalled you were there, but
Obscure, I disappeared.
This scratch is so deep I bleed,
You've sent this pushing surrogate
To perorate me off to hell.
From the sugared light of lamps
To power lines that feed and silver
With a teary devil, this incessant
Chat of anguish, of amends, of lack
Stabs on into the distant hours
An astute version of pleased love.
Don't cry such sweetened sighs
And understandings. I don't feel tears
But the glass lacerations
Of sentiment are wretchedly cute
And cut, vapid elocutions
That adorn like withered flowers.
So you dessert all my pretty hours,
Order them in triumphal form, and
With the adept stupidity of treason
I'll betray my insipidity with this.
I say you are imaginary
No mighty powers at all,
You're my creation, stationary
Without my will.
I'll write you right into these plays
If you harass us, see
How tissues of metonymies
Hold up your own voices to me.
You are my errant children, in cipher
Your plagiarized ideas of stone
Regale me not to kill you, vipers,
And die myself of boredom.
The head solidified, incandescent
The sun stuck me with her platinum threads,
Her bright white bends,
And burst the lens of imprisimed dyes
An oblong of the molten brain
Like a burning bar of iron lies
Impressed behind this eye and skin,
The screen in which I soft dissolve.
I
Slivers of crystal glint bluegreen in sunlight,
Rays of opal-light showering in pinpoints
In blue air
And forgotten sighs whisper
Rush in the ear
With the low whine of wind
The shattered glass burns gold and green
Frost flame blown through memory as blue wind
Soulless wind of twilight borne from iceland.
II
The shadow of the mountain
Sun-dazzle behind its crest
Creates a half-formed
Line
Tilting in the dawn,
Light, dusty blue air
Above the lateral grey air
Becomes indistinct at vanishing point.
III
Impressions on the blank tablet
From behind, cast upon the
Sun-white brilliance of a page
Curling smoky shadows of rising heat
Air curved and contoured in isothermal patterns
Writhes above the pavement.
I. Evening
I am the last.
The world spiralled in a chasm yesterday,
The last candles and cigars quenched,
The last gleaming galaxy flamed out,
My stars fall in a sleet of black diamond,
Ash fluttering over my bed
As I prepare to light my last match.
It will not light.
II. Midnight
I am brazed in its orange halo,
The soft whirr of its motor.
If I hide my head
Under this pillow
The face of my clock
Cannot see me.
III. Morning
A fly snuck through the screen
And lit upon the sill
A filament of dust
Drifted like milk
Along the watery window
Until it glided lightly
To a spun glass wing.
I am the dust, I sing,
But you are the sun.
If I did not dream the silken shadow
Of your face so close to mine — the edge
And texture of your eyes, the play of sun
Upon your skin, your smile, the glistening streaks
That curled and swirled your funny, fragile hair —
Then neither could I have imagined the quiet,
Absolute, that curved and stilled the air
Over the engine's roar, the rush of wind —
And watched as with a clear and enchanted eye
The image of your presence envelop me,
The shadow of your thought enwrap my thought.
And now, though you are gone, you linger here:
You are beside me, I feel you, quiet, still.
Fire green eyes, burning
Amber ice and emerald, Dies
Irae fragmented in flawless glass
Of cold electron microscope knives.
You are clear in your own image
And in the exotica of your loveliness.
But the unrefranging memories
Rushing in the house burning down
Inside define this madness
In the chill of extremities.
You will disheart me
Imprisoned in the gloam
In the operating room
Of day's shades into night,
Or glance me in the mirror
Of your own synoptic paralysis, as
Reflection slips and
My soul freezes.
I searched for my murderer
For months, for years, with a vision
And I had a gun and a plan. But the dust
In this desert has a five o'clock shadow,
No one in this series can swim, we drown
In it, pumping, flooded like stalled engines,
submerged, still, drilled with lead.
In the last fade out, the co-stars
Are always on the bottom of the same pool,
Their interlaced eyes burning
Under chlorinated suns.
There is a point of shattering,
A suffocated moment of helpless
Emptiness, when sense and balance slip
Sideways, dislocated
Where vision slid, glided, sank became
Dense, to glance up from the page
Seeing
Nothing
A perforated fact
Coiling down the drain
With warm red water,
The arcane void of the room,
Implosion of an abstract moment
When painlessly the tensors cracked
Like glass scattering over concrete.
I shiver in the cold silver
Of this aftermath, a splice
That bathed all my dumb days
In silent, shimmering slivers.
My glimpse of paradise
With you was numbered, it fades
So gradually, so slowly cascades
To numbness, to ice.
traces us with barbaric wire,
The gleaming pins of hallucination,
As ether blooms in the head
Dead lanes of the investigation,
Lost clues of a sedated desire,
Snap like pencil lead.
At summer's end I entered shock,
Blanched gray and clammy, a detective
Found Christ in a coma, the defective
Vision, cold in starry black.
I saw you come after me, mistress
At my sweet dream's vibrant end,
With a plastic face mask,
In your rush of blackout gas.
Seductive lack of oxygen, and
Close behind you the licking kiss.
How could I have come to be like this
Fallen in love with an artifice?
In its pressure cell
Of isolation, the soul
Weaves strange heirlooms,
Feeds in its deprivation
The sores of perjured illusions,
Breeds factual monsters,
Disfigures with the final touch
Of filial contusions.
How did I figure out this scheme?
Thought and related memories
Caught in redirect
Bloomed in savage dreams of
The future stilled, clean as hell,
Cold, serious, under control,
Erased of possible passion
And arrested in position.
|
