Canticle on the Monarchy
XXXI
And the gold of that land is very good:
There is found bdellium, and the onyx stone.
Abraham heard Him in something besides speech, so began our instructor,
Take me for nothing but Jewish: no Hellenist, not an apostate,
Take me for only a Hebrew, and listen with what you may muster
That we with one mind know how our God is to beckon us prostrate;
Seated at head of the cart was the teacher, a generous old scribe
That had himself paid full for a transport to Babylon eastward,
Gathering many of Israel’s poor, lame, born of unknown tribe
Each who could rest and be satisfied whist he travailed on his preached word:
Such was I one of the poor and the lame to be took, apprehensive
Following little I knew of the man I had met in the dungeon;
Carried us, though we were not gum, balsam or resins expensive
Which was explained us, For where is the quarter of the is the sun in?
Each of the quarters, my brethren, and such is the Name in us thorough,
Each of the children of God, and in this had he spoke of Him blameless:
Finding the saplings their branches and finding the foxes their burrow,
God has bestowed us an angel who even remained for us nameless;
Wherefore his teaching was heeded, and spoke he, So great is the calling,
Mighty the mission, it must be so told us in trebling quiet
Heard in the wind in the trees and the calm of contemplative lolling,
Lest we mistake it for something of matter by excess and riot,
Hear me, countrym’n: Abraham once in his youthful discernment,
When he was Abram, was prince in the city of Ur, was respected
Under the great king Nimr’d, as equal and further as servant
Next to his father Terah, and in empire one, as expected,
Must be as sharp as the edge of a knife! and with Lot in a youth bold
Sharing a princely repose in the empire built by the hunter,
Nimr’d, who reigned in Akkad and had vexing circumstance, truth told,
Which was to build for his city of Babel a wonder:
Shape a magnificent ziggurat reaching the heavenly door-posts,
Bid by a want to enforce his command, for the peoples united
Under his rod were a stiff-necked folk who reviled, deplored boasts,
Children of mountain’d nobility, speaking a taunt he requited
Might he construct to his name some monument looming and dreadful
Over his cities as solemn reminder to bend to but one will;
Nimr’d was mindful and ever so reticent, even regretful,
Raised on a high hill over a chapparal soaking the sun’s fill,
Whereas the crowds of advisers recalled him to mind obligations
Owed to the sun and the moon and the earth and the heavenly powers
Which had conspired to make him a king of his numerous nations
Now to be paid or prevailed by the tower before it all sours;
Nimr’d considered it harshly, desiring speech from his princes
Whom of all seventy spoke with opinions seventy-seven:
Show of his might! or his mercy! to provinces Nim’rd evinces,
Even suggesting a ladder to conquer the lowest of heaven
Whereas its angels, if angels inhabit its numer’ble mansions,
Open their throne-room, naming him god of a sizable portion;
Risible effort indeed! but in those days, warring expansions
Circled the globe, and behooving his kingship to reckon his fortune,
Permanent station above in celestial hideaway mattered
Whence he may rule with no fear of reprisal from miser’ble victim,
This is the lust of an empire; wherefore his viziers chattered,
Chancing Terah and his son and his nephew to strive to convict him:
Housed in his city of Ur, the repentance of these was astounding
Having become rich princes but tethered to Nimr’d forever
Therewith the sons of Eber had a claim to the place at its founding
When it was raised from the earth, and Eber was unlikely to sever,
Strain or refuse Cush, neither his sons, for his peoples begotten
Needfully dwelt in the land by improbable Cushite affection
After dividing, peleg, from their father and sooner forgotten
After begotten by Cainan, the child of promised defection,
These are the sons of the man Shem, pitching their tents and sojourning
East of the Canaanites, West of the garden underwater and hidden
Near to the city of Ur, and the sun as it rose in the morning
Bade to Terah and his kindred, but none was aware he was bidden,
Knowing instead to rebuke King Nimr’d in idolous error
Honoring suns, moons, sins and created designs with his project
Rather than holding to better religion in spiritu’l prayer:
God as Creator is not, as you know, as a visible object,
Seen through, not as within, the creation His Word reinforces,
Owing all honor to artisan, not art; prototype ever,
Not imitation; for see, as temporally rivulet courses
Mark in the land-scape image of waters, as dunes in Negev air
Picture the face of the winds, as the wax to its seal and the child —
Surely I speak repetitions! — Terah and his sons’ indignation
Over the tower to penetrate sky-floor sapphire-tiled
Only for man’s exaltation was cause to ignite perturbation
Manifest thus: in the palm-draped court of the rivery marsh-plain
Four of the princes appeared in the presence of Nimr’d in meeting,
Saying, O King, thou shalt livest a short life sowing a dark grain:
Heaven forbid it! we seek in thy sight but a favor’ble seating
Since we approach with no want and no pride and no bribe and no weapon
Asking as fitting of princes to lift from our conscience the pressures
Searing us hot if we serve an idolator! what can we reckon,
Wishing to keep for thee goodness and justice, celestial treasures?
Now is a profit’ble time to forget this tower improper,
Say we o King — and enthroned, and impressed by their comingled-in-blood thick
Nimr’d was moved in his heart, for the gods of his fathers were copper,
Which he was building up worse with his ziggurat fashioned of mudbrick:
What a calamitous journey already the empire trudges!
Sooner it blossoms to ashes and wizens to gloryless wither,
Thereof a death is imbued in beginnings: The emperor judges,
Nimr’d began, and so heaven shall quake as I draw to it hither
Under the roar of a scandalized king, for to what do I mention?
What have I done to Terah? or to Eber? to but nevermore hold sway
Now as if Nimr’d is fit for contempt, and defying convention
Princes rebuke kings? would you trial the sun for its gold ray?
Nay, and it seems to me insolent standing on palatine marble
Sheared from the earth with equivalent rights to correct from the lower
Towards the better! but see, I am not as a god or a marvel
That I am ever beyond a critique from a righteous bestower,
See if thou knowest a better solution: I came into spoil,
Binding the king Lugalzaggesi, taking his city and glory,
Also the king of Akkad, and of Kish by the scavenger’s toil
Marked by a stele for vultures detailing the terrible story;
What was expected was peace to our days but alas! see,
Rebels arise to be set free, eager to drag me to prison
Dealing me harshly until I have aged and my spirit has passed me
That all may wonder and curse at my crown with unending derision,
Not so for Nimr’d, of heaven engendered, of fate predetermined:
Owing perhaps to the rights of the princes across all the nations;
Now it is plain I require approval to which you have sermoned
Whilst I am also amid circumscription of fresh complications
Wanting a duty’s repose in an eon of deluge renewal
Even before it has dried from the Arabah sands, do I thus err?
Noe was our father, but sharing him counts for no squabble’s removal
Playing in empire worthy the name; and Terah, who could trust pray’r
Called on the Lord who had saved his creation from giants and evil
During the days of Methusaleh, took to Himself but a remnant
Fathered by Noe, and replied to the king, if he, fearing upheaval
Sought to prevent war, then he was sure to be left independent,
Absent divine help, when unsurpassed revolution transpired
Which would be mercy: superlative horrors were sure in the waiting
Lest he repent, and as sign of the words he was speaking inspired,
Abram and Lot rose upward in slight levitation, restating,
Prophecies three shall appear to your eyes in the midst of your dreaming,
Three whole nights shall depart from your rest for your willful redeeming,
Oracles pass to the sleepless repose of the king disconcerting,
Lest you repent not; thence shall the dreams be beyond your diverting;
Wherefore the king was aghast at the four, and the sun, reemerging
Shone in the palace from high in the clouds; and lo Nimr’d was tempered,
Ordering each of the men be rebuked and delivered to scourging,
Then be removed from his presence, so when it was dusk he remembered,
Fighting his urge to succumb to the gift of a mystical slumber:
Nimr’d observed rich rivers, the waters supplying his satraps,
Salting the earth on behalf of the Lord, and no perilous thunder,
Neither a flame from the heavens was destined to vanquish his vast tracts,
Rather the means of his wealth, by the port of his city’s effusion
Bringing it waters and vessels and merchants, the waters were toxins!
Dream as it might be, the meaning at once was evasive allusion
Since it was only a penalty, lacking preventative options,
Rivers of life all becoming a salting of conquering vandals,
Such it was seen by the king who awoke in the night of his dreaming
Sweating and panting and frightful of shadows produced by his candles,
Flittering lights, for the salt of the earth by a ficklest streaming
Struck him as irony, even the poetry due to injustice,
Wherefore he pondered in credible dark his unseemly ambition,
Thinking to ask for a magi, adviser or sage to discuss this,
Which by the dawn were assembled in tenuous standing position
Flocking the court of his majesty; rancorous not, but indignant,
Nimr’d commanded the men to conduct their research on his omen:
Each so derived, from the work of their best divination equipment
Separate meanings, and therefore its interpretation was open,
Kindling fury in Nimr’d again, for he heard from the four men
More dreams wait for the king in his bed, so abashing convention,
Asked he for what were the dreams to be dreamt, and the message they portend;
Whether he ordered on such an irrational, hapless intention,
Rather than merely expressing his want, he was hardly upbraided,
Since in the presence of kings no magician is eager in correction
Knowing their work is for comfort and suffering futures abated,
(Whether it profited much to their clients of little detection)
Not for repentance; and thus in his eyes were his sages’ perplexes
Lavishing Nimr’d with heartfully moving relief into evening
That he, emboldened, continued to plan for his empire’s nexus
Several hours to morning’s return and, no slumber receiving,
Fought his fatigue to a bitterest end in dipartite compulsion:
One, to receive of the rare inspiration bestowed to the tired;
Two, for the sake of avoiding the oracles fraught to revulsion;
That he had only in part felt peace from magicians he hired,
Whereas the four men stood in the square of the city declaring,
Citizens, travelers, vigil the skies, for the deed of your masters,
Evil in origin, trembles the heavens in enmity flaring!
Princes, our rulers shall doctor a future untold in disasters,
Ask him and see for yourselves, as he sleeps in the shadow of visions:
Nimr’d, awaken! and renderest now to thy peoples their portion,
What hast thou done? and shalt work? — so I urge, redispose your derisions
Lest we be doomed on account of idolatry’s awful consortion!
Many by hearing were turned to repentance, and others were maddened,
Others unsure, but the rest undecided incensed at their brashness
Speaking so ill of a king, who by chastening hierarchies flattened,
Treading the heavens alike underfoot by their petulant rashness
Rioted out in the streets, and the spirit of chaos erupted
Slinging their bodies and hands in a violently lateral rabble
Shoving the mass of their excess, continuing uninterrupted,
Toward the gates of the palace in mortal miasma and babble
Like a Leviathan made from the flesh of partakers unwitting
Roaring in mouth to the shout of a crowd in enraged protestation
Losing their purpose but even so came to the place he was sitting,
Nimr’d in sleepless malaise, who observed the abrupt convocation
Forming around his escape, and disturbed he arose to his prelates
Saying the vulgar, because their perception was lacking distinction
Came to be clouded in head by the chopping of logic by zealots
Thwarting the rights of a king for a personal, vengeful extinction,
Issuing orders to persons above in command, and so doing,
Toppled the pillars of hierarchy, thus he had need for reprisal:
What he intended was never determined, for thus was ensuing
Arguments piped from his counsel in unison, absent surmisal
Toward a definite action, and Nimr’d determined his own plan
Absent his counsel, dispersing the men and their spurious wisdom
Out to their chambers, intending to punish Haran and his whole clan
While, as well, so confounding the crowd as to stifle their schism:
Men of Asshur, (he addressed) I am wont to remediate defects
Thwarting our empire, even the defects mended incorrectly;
One of the issues determined was found by our numerous prefects
That we have failed to adore the empyrean heavens directly!
See the revolt but among us, arising in hearts disaffected
Wherein you now see, men of Asshur, such consequent riot
Borne by rebellion over against kings heaven elected,
That we embark in a new dawn, lighting the wilderness quiet
Stymied by only the whims of ingratitude, stirred in impious,
Striving to stop us from honoring what has bestowed us domin’on:
These are the works of diab’lery! but from the seat of my daïs,
Much as a mother embraces her first-brood sparrows with pin’on
Heaven has welcomed us each to adore, indisposed to forget us,
Wherein the movement of heavenly bodies receive from the First Cause,
Passed to us each by the generous will of the stars to beget us —
See, then! what the impious have worked, to reject and have cursed gods,
Blest are the hands to restrain them! blest by their king and Creator!
After he spoke, each man was uncertain of what they all wanted,
Sharply divided and shouting and thrusting and thrashing the greater,
Giving the four men time to retreat and have quickly absconded,
While the rest were in depths of their passions redounding to excess
Blithely convulsing in crowds in a motion without destination
Seeking a thing, four things in a sense, from the crest of their nexus
Till in decelerate winding, it spiraled and lost population
Slowly becoming unpeopled, with none of the men apprehended:
Winnowing time in a gloomier dusk interwoven, aglitter,
Blended with spirals of twilit caresses, and none were amended,
Only occluded to bodies of work in the usual bitter;
Nimr’d ascended the steps to his daïs above his surroundings:
First of the mortal descendants of man to command all his vision,
What he can see to the limits of sun from his seat was his grounding,
Even so, see what little his might worked out his decision,
Threading the horse-hair twiddled in pommel of sword on the ceiling,
Such as the story entails, but I speak in the myths of the nations;
Nay, the perplexed king long in the past was the first to a feeling
Only belonging to God, and unshared in the king’s conversations
That he was gripped with a reticent power, a tangible worry
Slipping the reins in his hands: it was only a king’s perturbation:
While the four men tented ou’side of the emperor’s fury:
There he was, treating the prospect of sleeping with great hesitation.
a convoy to Babylon • Tale of the Patriarch
Four men oppose Nimrud’s tower • Abram among them
A riot and confusion • The four men escape Babel