The Temple of Heaven
* Anne Fairbairn
Ninsun's cuneiform message to her son Gilgamesh, the king of Uruk, before the battle of kish.
"Today, in the white temple of
heaven,
my tears were red as I prayed to Anu.
The air quivered with the sound of harps,
as our priests offered ritual sacrifices,
their silver-serpent armlets flashing
in the golden shafts of light.
Tonight, the walls of silence whisper.
I feel the pressure of the stars
and share my galaxy of fears
with a host of dark, tormented shadows.
A hawk hovers above the crescent moon
and wild geese are lost in the clouds.
The cosmos is my soul; my soul the
cosmos.
I transcend this world's eternal sorrow.
Tomorrow, when the tamarisks sing with
dew,
I'll clasp my hands in prayer for you.
Be brave in battle my dearest son,
and when the long day's killing is done,
cover your fallen brothers with leaves
when you've lost their ghostly breath."
The scribe laid aside his stylus
and held for Ninsun the finished tablet,
to roll her seal across the clay
- a shell, the moon, a star, an ibis.
Inscribed five thousand years ago,
her message remains the same today.
Baghdad-Canberra 1990-1991
* Anne Fairbairn is, an Australian poet, Journalist and artist who lives in Sydney. Throughout the 1980's she made several visit to the Arab countries, including Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt where she gave reading of and lectures on Australian poetry in a number of universities. In 1988, in conjunction with Dr. Ghazi al-Gosaibi, on the book "Feathers and the Horizon", one of the most comprehensive anthologies of modern Arabic poetry in English translation yet seen in Australia or, for that matter, the rest of the English-speaking world.