Mesopotamia

Between two rivers, between drought and flood,

Alluvial civilisation accretes.

Mudtowns obliterated by disaster:

The wind piles sand against their ruins,

Filling in their streets,while the rain

Smooths forlorn heaps into mammary mounds.


Ur lies in ruins,its people dispersed,

Wife abandoned,daughter abandoned,

Walls broken,houses burnt down,

The dead like potsherds scattered

And turning to sand.


In Uruk,home of Anu and Inanna,

Temple cone-mosaic facades

Gleam red,white and black in the glare.

Hunched Sumerian scribes etch pictograms

Into clay tablets,agglutinative thought

Made flesh.They are heaven’s liege-men

On this flat disc surrounded by mountains,

Floating ensphered on a sweetwater ocean,

The terrifying Netherworld groaning below.

Here,where a sudden blinding cloudburst

Turns dusty plain to malebolge,

And a sandstorm candevastate the brightest day,

What should men do but placate the gods

And labour to win their goodwill?

To the gods the ziggurats extend

An invitation to descend;men they command

To shed their shells and ascend.


The temple doors are opened:

The gods gilded statue shines forth

In the shrine’s semi-darkness,

Washed,anointed,perfumed,dressed and fed,

Incense and flowers at his feet.

The air vibrates with music and incantation,

Bread,cakes,butter,fruit and honey on the altar,

The smoke of roasting flesh commingled

With cedarwood and cypress fumes.

Whisper the prayer through a reed tube

In Sumerian into the bull’s right ear,

In Akkadian into the left.


The king lives in harmony.His palace is harmonious,

The sun-gloried courtyard paved with gypsum slabs,

And,inside,the long proud flight of steps

To the throne-room, to the dais

Where His Majesty sits,

His justice as simple as a handful of flour and dates.

In the narrow dusty rubbish-clogged streets,

Pedlars and shoppers walk in the walls’ shade

And a crowd gathers at the crossroads

To hear a storyteller recite “Gilgamesh”.


Ashurnasirpal, King of Assyria,

No pity,no piety in his beaked image,

The straight-staring eyes of total power,

Proclaims: “I built a pillar and covered it

With the skins of rebellious chiefs I had flayed.

Some I walled up inside the pillar,

Some I impaled upon the pillar.

Others I had bound to stakes around it.”

Returning in triumph from campaigns of conquest,

He brings with him strange beasts in cages

And unknown seeds to plant in his gardens.


At Nineveh the omens are reported;

Mathematicians and astronomers plot the heavens

And some already wake from horrible dreams,

Having witnessed the seat of the gods in flames.


In Babylon the New Year’s Festival commences.

A priest unlocks the Temple gate,

Opening the courtyard for prayer.

Purify the precinct with Tigris water,

Smear the walls with cedar resin.

The ceremonial slaughterer with dripping hands

Casts the decapitated sheep into the river

And the old year’s sins are carried away.

The penitent king surrenders his insignia,

The priest strikes his cheek and he bows to the god,

“I did not sin, I protected Babylon.

Neither did I neglect the rites

Or punish without reason.”

Then he rises,purged and blessed,

And once more puts authority on,

Heaven’s chosen Lord of Men.