Monday, July 2, 2018

Sorrow Of Her Lost Land

Sorrow Of Her Lost Land
© Surazeus
2018 07 02

After the planes shooting bombs soar away
and the tanks rust to dust in howling wind,
I walk among the ruins of their homes,
finding hair and photographs of the dead.

The sun hangs forever in the gold sky
and leaves red circle of blood in my eyes
which erases the memory of their names
so I write them again in wind-blown dust.

This city that stood here ten thousand years,
growing from huts on muddy river shore
to ziggurats of goddesses and priests,
has returned to the dust from which it sprang.

If I dig far enough down in the rubble,
past the skulls of children killed by cruel bombs,
will I find the skull of First Mother Ishtar
who taught mankind how to sing tales of life?

The Priestess of the World with burning eyes
appears from the sand storm of her home land
and hands me broken tablets baked from clay
that recount the tale of King Gilgamesh.

I want to dig my fingers in red clay
and make new tablets from flesh of her land
to write new epic tale about her life
how she had to leave lush Shumer at last.

My ancestors fled Shumer long ago
and traveled north to the Scythian Mountains
where they climbed high to the cavern of shadows
and wrestled fire from the hand of the sky.

Ten thousand years later in Michigan
I gaze backward where my ancestors walked,
living along rivers entire life times,
and see lush Shumer in sands of Iraq.

From ancient legends writ in holy books,
I dream memories of their time in the garden
when they ate sweet fruit from the Tree of Life,
but left Eden to colonize new lands.

How strange to think, as I gaze in her eyes,
that she stayed there in lush land of Shumer
these ten thousand years, while I traveled west
onward forever to hills of Oregon.

I see her singing on the ziggurat,
Ishtar still alive in her blazing eyes,
mother of all religions still on Earth,
still singing the sorrow of her lost land.

Now that I see Ishtar is still alive,
walking Earth in the eyes of every woman,
I rejoice her sacred Song of Creation
will always ring from the Temples of Truth.

1 comment:

  1. Tablets IV
    Dunya Mikhail

    https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/147132/tablets-iv

    ReplyDelete