A raga for Enheduana

Something was built here
that was thought important,

a funeral ziggurat perhaps,
memorial to a fallen tyrant,

an ancient palimpsest inscribed
with layer upon layer of dream,

seals and ceilures, precious beads
commemorating epic deeds.

Here are toys, idols, weaponry
held forever in a ruined fortress,

stripped femurs and the skull of a horse
laid bare amid the desolation,

fishtraps and walkways woven basket-fashion,
an imprint of wickerwork in vessels of clay,

residual rituals implicit
in goatherds and pot sherds.

Married to the moon, Enheduana
is the mortal embodiment,

a living cultic likeness
of the astral goddess Ishtar Inanna,

consort of the wise one Nanna
whose name may be Sin,

whose crescent horns
herd the stars like cattle

while she, cast alone
into the rebel-held wilderness,

must yet prepare sacrificial feasts
for errant deities

and centuries of dead women
interred beneath the floors.

Stains in the stonework
become scenes of rural life,

a lush green land of milk and honey,
sheep and goats shaded by olive and palm,

landscapes to locate a crucial figure,
places mapped to hopes and fears,

desire and lust, profit, absence,
poverty and wealth, the art

to destroy and to create,
to plant and pluck out;

a cargo of stolen powers –
weapons, wisdom, justice,

musical instruments and old age,
objects and practices,

elements and destinies, precious
metals and memorable food,

all the lost languages
entombed by the windblown sand,

green hills and gatherings in a fertile crescent,
cities without a city wall.

A few fugitive traces of pigment remain
that perhaps served images sacred or profane,

archives of pilfered portraiture are made
absurd and mythic by displacement,

routes of desperate migration
deadlier than ever,

while the divine and divinely anointed
peer down unmoved from their pedestals.

Some say the high priestess Enheduana
may not have composed the verses herself

yet it’s the oldest trick in the book,
the stylus applied to the stele

recording human connection,
preservation of memory and craft.

Here are songs sung by the moon
of love, conquering and sadness,

the mortal crimes and villainies
of Achilles, Menahem, Modi, Netanyahu;

tales of hope, tears and tyranny told
by prophets and wandering bards

while we bear passive witness
through our satellite screens,

a Tower of Babel built
in a well-lit studio,

ripe he knows for misinterpretation,
a panoply of spurious constructions.

Relics of gods and heroes
determine sites of veneration,

Venus in her perfection
the incarnation of Isis, Helen, Ishtar, Indrani,

the Whore of Babylon gang-raped
by generations of invading armies,

her acolytes incarcerated,
hooded in Abu Ghraib;

allegorical depictions must fail
to contain or alleviate pain.

In days of war and pandemic
strange visions assault the mind –

a row of dangling bodies
gibbeted for the crows;

spiritually ordained slaughter
along the tracks dividing India from itself,

lines drawn hastily in blood
in a far bureaucrat’s office

requiring gods and mortals
to decide which side they’re on;

a once grandiloquent effigy
roped and toppled

under the eye of Horus
and a bored global viewership;

robbed-out walls and bombed-out towers,
a dozen lives taken to rescue one –

the arithmetic of relative worth,
wealth versus poverty, my relative or yours,

figures placed on the age of one hand
and on the other the number of the dead

to balance the scales of justice
and quantify the value of news;

like trauma to the cervical vertebrae
consistent with a beheading,

the head held up for the camera by the hair,
a lit cigarette between lifeless lips;

or is she multiple, half-mythical,
like Homer, that crew of deceitful poets

wandering a westward sea?
Does she wield the reed-blade by hand,

pressing her mark in the clay
to make a name for herself,

conscious of bent back, aching fingers,
the individuality of body,

or must she give dictation
to a learned class of scribes

for an unimaginable posterity
to pen an origin myth of authorship?

Later translators will lay claim
to fair shares of renown, yet

healing and wisdom to witch lore;
and does it matter if the story isn’t true?

For who will speak of the buildings destroyed,
the political framework of human bone,

missiles aimed at targets,
habitations near the border?

These laments are not meant to express sorrow
but to avert future catastrophe,

the as yet unimagined brutalities
of Agamemnon, Caesar, Lionheart, Assad.

Law, legend, transaction are preserved
in reed-cut indent on clay,

baked into permanence
in the burning of the library,

genealogy and astronomy
hardened into artefact.

Some of the words are lost
while others remain indecipherable

from which architects of the new city
construct a misleading narrative.

Fabrics depict ritual grieving
in moments of agony and intimacy,

childbirth woven with growing grain
gives rise to the birth of writing,

the name of the writer revealed
as the weaver of reminiscence;

text woven into textile,
table built into tablet,

the interlaced marks of Inanna,
fatal goddess of war and metamorphosis,

whose power to be infinite
has lesser gods fleeing

like bats among the ruins –
those furtive future gods

of Abraham and Zeus
descend like fallen angels

bearing gifts of survival, art and joy,
submission, fame and insignificance,

bass notes and trumpet calls
brought to bear on the walls of Jericho,

the innocent convicted,
the guilty raised to power.

Where minstrel boys tune lyres
and fondle bone-carved flutes,

where the sweet scent of victory
mingles with the stench of valour,

Inanna, goddess of love and war,
descends to the underworld

of Gaza, Dresden, Masada, Babi Yar,
and her stripped corpse is hung by a hook.

Resurrection comes later
as Venus, Aphrodite, Parvati, Astarte,

the green corn rising
from the ravaged earth;

the desecrated ruins of Palmyra,
all the stolen relics of the museum –

impossible likenesses and lusts
of pilgrims and other trespassers.

Enheduana sings to herself as she writes,
imagining the divinity of strangers,

the strangeness of divinity that inheres
in the sand, the soil, the ripening grain,

and sea-going vessels navigate tideways
where in the long-ago future lies only land,

stone buildings on the marshy edge,
a harbour where heroes ride horseback;

now the same moon still sails
where the sea is a day’s ride distant.

While six cities claim the tomb of Daniel,
interpreter of the writing on the wall,

Nanna, planning the world’s tallest statue,
tribute to his own divine forebears,

mumbles syllables of outlandish import,
caresses the severed head of a horse,

considers the enigmatic shapes
of disinterred artefacts and tools,

cattle driven from far-off lands
for ritual feasting at the burial mound,

a mass grave not for warriors
but the bystanders of the battle;

a family picnic in the ruins
where the vultures will assemble,

slaves compelled to quarry the stones
and serve the potted meats.

Where Enheduana sings
her praises to Inanna

the raging desert storm
becomes the radiant day,

a vulture scavenging the land,
cleaning the scattered corpses.

All this occurs, remember,
two centuries before Abrahamic time,

long ages before the land becomes desert
and the wine runs dry on the vine,

fifty or so generations before Homer
reframes the Gilgamesh epic,

the king become giant, become hero,
become Odysseus visiting underworlds

of the unforgotten unforgiven,
the ageless ferryman leaning into his oar –

best look out for them dead uns,
never know what you mightn’t catch.

So the valiant gain self-knowledge and nausea
on a wine-dark sea, moonrise and moonset

throwing long spectres, silver on the waves
below which Leviathan stirs,

where there may be paintings that remain
undiscovered, a crime unsolved

from before the age of pyramids,
before the unification of god.

Who, then, is Enheduana?
A woman born of woman,

loved as a child for her own sake,
risen to a title gained not given;

while we are fated to a place in antiquity,
Enheduana composes only modern verse,

commands the unhoused exile ‘Sail
your boat of sorrow to another shore’

– a state where the dead
are granted freedom to gather

and battle-hungry warriors succumb
to the temptations of writing

in the dead language of erudition,
an abyss of missing text,

words unpreserved or still buried,
a cubist ragtime in the desert air.

She says ‘Now they bring me funeral gifts,
am I no longer living?’