Canticle on the Dyarchy
XXXII
Doth not interpretation belong to God?
Tell me what you have dreamed.
After a spell in the bustle of travel with nothing to cover,
Rabbi resumed of his story, addressing us remnant eleven:
Each good man is a friend, good friends thus also a brother;
Brothers deserve the inheritance given by Father in heaven,
Promises made in unfailing agreement to Abram ancestral,
Once on a duty to save the Chaldees from an utter disaster
Long in the past, much prior to Horeb and calendars festal,
Ur was in desperate danger in hands of a taciturn pastor,
Finally falling asleep in the alkaline air of the night skies,
Dreaming again, and he saw in the mountains an army observing,
Scarcely a nation and scarcely a people, but lo! with alight eyes,
Eyes in the mountains awaiting with hunger and wrath unreserving
Perched for the moment the sons of Akkad grow weak from contentment,
Posed to devour his precious Akkad, and the ruins they promise on leaving
Never shall mortals uncover, and much less build on its bedment,
Every pebble and stone of Akkad and beyond all retrieving
Borrowed for other foundations or otherwise missing and buried,
While the city of Babel, the place of his majesty reigning,
Even the gate of the gods as it’s called, shall forever be harried,
Losing its grasp on itself, and its myths shall be told for disdaining,
Idols are taken as loot for the lesser, its children dispersing
Turning to miscegenation to prosper, and thus be diluted,
While the babbling rabble shall spit on Chaldeans in cursing
Longer than ages, to dine on their sacrificed suppers polluted,
Wiping their mouths and commending themselves; and the dream had concluded
Judging the world’s first emperor harshly for ziggurat-making
Though for the proud man tangled in idols, to repent is precluded:
Rather he sell of the whole earth than his hubris forsaking
Which at the same time burned in the heart of another uniter;
Maybe I ought to remind you of these four prophets I mentioned:
Father Terah, who was gregarious but also a virulent fighter;
Abram, a radical prince of the four who had wisdom suspensioned
Over him always, and spoke to the truth in his every disclosure;
Lot, a severe and austere man taken with many opinions;
Also the emperor’s son Eliezer, of mighty composure,
Not as a first-born, thus he was master, instead of dominions
Claimed by his father, of Abram’s possessions, and though so conflicted,
Serving the foes of his father, the king’s own maid was Eber’s bride
Given to wed in the past, so allegiance was dually prescripted;
Out of the city, the four bathed there in the river and air-dried,
Tending a crackling fire with generous drive and intention,
Proud of their predicant, whereas the consequent flight and upheaval
Led to a similar task in their midst. a but friendly dissension
Over the subsequent chaos, reflecting on causes of evil,
Whether it even has cause or if evil is something omitted,
Staining or withering hands of its artisans lawlessly doing,
Changing the man or affecting his soul with his evils committed,
Whether the man wills fresh, or if evil itself is pursuing,
That we may know if the curse on the empire presaged by dreaming
Sullies the stones of the city with substance of tainted condition;
What is it that is rebuked in their news? for in this is the meaning,
That by reform or by flight, yea — quite so, a different mission —
Whether reform or a flight from the wicked is proper to justice;
Each man answered unique: Eliezer deferred to his master,
Abram believed it was something of purity, cleanness, robustness;
Lot had his own reservations but held it a moral disaster
That the unrighteous be left to their own and without intervention;
Father Terah, their commander, was saddened and oddly agnostic,
Seeing at once that evil had origins lain in intention
Whilst he believed it belonged to an integral, even if caustic,
Function in God’s great cosmic arrangement, and this he reported:
Abram and Lot were astonished and, further, devised confutation
Only availing no sensible peace, but a union distorted
Marked by uneasy, distraught recognition; far from placation,
Each had agendas unchecked, and the four were in passionless scheming
Keeping an ear to the idle conversing of kin on the matter;
Even with virtue to prophesy Nimr’d’s miraculous dreaming
None were so righteous to quell in themselves their cognitional chatter:
Though in respect to their stations Terah was the highest of princes,
Lot had a popular charism, easily swaying opinion;
Abram had sound mind, not but loquacious as convinces,
Such that even the man Eliezer to wit was no min’on;
Each had his gift and his burden, and though altogether belonging
Every man of the four hard-shouldered their tent by the wadi
Only according to what was their own; and the empire’s wronging,
Nimr’d and idol creation, it called into question the body,
That is, the four had their personal duties and sanitized wet-shod
Working collectively, each according to mutual calling
While the Lord judged every city as one to forget God;
This was the dubious insight, the union of the empire falling
Even as those with a pious prosperity, bound by a promise,
Found for themselves more reasons for conflict and thus disuniting;
Down by the rivery palatine banks unadorned but immodest,
When the descending of lighting and breeze of the evening was biting,
Thereof dissembled the princes of Ur and Asshur and of Babel
That in the empire nothing remained but the throes of division:
Raucous amongst those men in the courts and the highways of travel,
Quiet amongst these four who were kinsm’n in straight opposition
Equally thwarting the others and threatening further dissension
Save for Terah’s indecision, forsooth he would all of the sudden,
When he decides, be excluding the one or the other dimension
Which for his part so contributes to what is his countenance sullen
Languishing waste to his leadership role to the rote melancholic
Rather than argue or winnow he lathers the salve of mistrusting
Which as we know from our own is a sharp, aged taste, alcoholic,
Wholly describing their problems and also our own in discussing,
Rather, narrating the splintering family each of us chooses —
This is the rule of duality, that as the number increases,
That is, the number of rulers, the image of heaven reduces
Till it is only a shadowy specter, a portrait in pieces
Failing to reckon the glorious hierarchy heaven-constructed,
Though as I figure, the tale as I share is a diatribe going
Toward an ending with character, that as the face is obstructed
Even the seeds of redemption are sewn all the while unknowing;
Bickering came to the court of the emperor much at the same time,
Hopeful magicians and sages were gathered for royal persuasions
Toward their ends, as all politics makes for an awfully tame crime,
Only entailing the worst in the wanting of better occasions
Suiting their needs or desires, and flustered was Nimr’d enthroned here,
Ruling a bounty of cities but not the designs of his high court,
Gainsa’yrs and biters of backs who report on their oft-overblown fear,
Chittering voices and clambering hands of a secret and sly sort
Which coalesce to disturb good thinking, impediments each too
Toward the making of dignified choices, inspired or gen’us,
Clattering noise of requests in the form of: o king, we beseech you;
Packaged with praises and blessings and Nimr’d, began to so see this
Harkening back to the previous day and dismissed all his counsel,
Having a mind to decree to the empire stringent correction
Where he could give an oration to angels or speak a denouncal,
Since he was emperor simply, again by the heavens’ election,
Every order he gives is of God, so he thinks of his office,
Whereof he boiled his mind with a simmering steam desperation
Needing the gumption to start thus, needing the gumption to stop this;
Surely the heavens are ever-immune to a common placation,
Moreso his populace, teeming and gener’lly restless
Being the first to adore mere man as their emperor kneeling;
Not as it were proper for cowards, no task for a man who is reckless,
Only the pious; so Nimr’d reclined and with eyes to the ceiling,
Praising the moon and the stars and the sun and the satellite planets,
Speaking his pray’rs in a deference worthy of sentient beings,
Asking for wisdom and, thereof in claiming to not understand this,
Praising the heavenly bodies for following stellar proceedings,
That he may also determine and follow his own as a master
Governing not bright planets but mortals with attitudes, heartaches,
Plots and desires who suffer in gloom of edenic disaster
Charting their paths in elliptical journeys in ever-bizarre shapes,
That he can satisfy not men, only his glorious patron
Ruling from heaven above; and an answer, epiphanic knowledge,
Came to him suddenly, that he arose and his posture was straightened
Ready to act, so he sent for his servant who, paying him homage,
Asked his request, and the emperor told him to ready a stallion speedy
Which he complied with, and Nimr’d departed in vigorous hasting
Out of the city alone, and the young horse, galloping greedy
Kicked up the dust of the earth of the road with uncloven a basting
Showing the four men, where he was headed in timely arrival
Someone approached, but alone, and the men were perturbed but unworried
Even upon each seeing the emperor, none in denial
That he has come to repent and without men, such was he hurried
Though in surprise this king raced toward their camp on the river
Braced on his horse on its back, as was found in the Scythian riders,
Rearing and shouting, I have come of myself with my terms to deliver
Whereas a peace can be reach for you, not as impious dividers,
Rather as countrym’n striving to execute trustful conditions
Since we are each, with no person excepted, of mind to conspire
Toward improving the empire each from respective positions,
Hid, it is not, this circumstance posed a predicament dire
Since as you prophesied dreams were delivered according to warning;
What I request is: to work with me, that we can broker solution
Not in rebuke or defiance or balking or fruitlessly scorning,
Rather considering what I was bid by your group allocution
Something amiss was determined, I see it in heaven’s designing
That I am better to dream to your warning than squander decision
Whereof I mount an extravagant ziggurat, era-defining,
Which I shall dedicate soon, and we mustn’t disparage precision
Wherefore I need you all there as my allies, to harken it holy
Even if others demean it to idols, to consecrate rightly
Bring the four of my friends to anoint it for ELOHIM solely,
Which is the truth, but misleading the turbulent masses so slightly;
Whereas before the arrangement of men, unconfused but embittered
Marveled at nothing, the offer of Nimr’d had raked up a tempest
Whether in justice can man be unrighteous appearance-considered
Whilst he was secretly pious without so betraying its essence,
That is, of heavenly judgment unstoked in first observation,
Whereas before it was something of fleeing the substance of evil,
Might it be substance, the lines were the same but in diff’rent location:
Those who believed in all wickedness springing from mem’ry’s retrieval
Also were not disinclined to the words of a princely contorting,
Diffident not to the purpose of wisdom in Nimr’d’s appealing;
Which as it stands altogether divided the four from consorting,
Even so, in differing not philosophic’ly, only in dealing,
Rather, consorting, with Nimr’d or flying in haste from collusion
Not on the basis of staining from evil or scandal’d appearance,
Only the proper respect for the God here meant in allusion,
Whether it better to say Him aloud with a crystal coherence
Rather than keeping Him silent, acknowledged in signaled reflection:
Nay for our Abram and Lot, who prepared to reject the condition
Till Eleazer decided it fitting if, without His detection
People were ought to be sanctified even without recognition
Speaking the Name of the Lord, and to Nimr’d’s loving elation
Kinship had won Eleazer; Terah on his own so too shared in,
Saying the plan was a first step toward a prosperous nation
Sanctioned by God for the worship of One with no idol’s impairment,
Wherefore he might, as he thought, but begin in it earnest perfection
Turning the evil to good by the ziggurat’s brickw’rk ascension
Where it perhaps may possess by the Lord’s own treasured election
Rhyme from the rhymeless, and string it on threads of a heavenly tension;
This was the cause of Terah, for he factored it knowing he might die
Still with no meek hesitation, for then in his time, who was truer?
New was the empire, new was the king who was setting his sights high,
Ruling was new, for indeed in an era in which all was newer,
Only the daring was good if the sins of our father were ancient
That it be told of Terah and his kin as the firsts of a good works,
Ignorant though of the fact it was cruelly beyond his attainment,
Stayed by the will of his will and its circular operant bulwarks;
Even so, Abram and Lot were of differing views on the matter
Left Eleazer, Terah and the emperor swiftly, severely,
Kicking up dust with no goods in possession and meaning to scatter
Over the west, and Terah in dispute had considered clearly
Risks as were now most manifest, that he may lose his companions,
Family even, to stitch up politic’lly prompt disagreement
Over the mires of each of their own philosophical cantons
Since it had seemed a necessity now to be bracketed, lenient;
Empires, after all, gathering races of men in conjunction
Never may hope for a peaceable flourishing lest by discussion
Compromise might be attained, and Terah, who had seen it so function
Knew for his son the ideals of his fathers could lead to destruction
When the ideals were unchanged in the face of reality’s dudgeon
Dripping mercurial venom, but each were as equally dauntless
Facing the other, and kinsm’n were naught to persuade as to bludgeon,
Thus as the four indivisible parted in want of a wantless,
Proper religion, the king was disposed to his brute machinations
Even as Abram and Lot were correct, as known in hist’ry
Further confirmed in miraculous, fev’rish exacerbations
Spoken in these: he began to recant the celestial myst’ry,
Abram in pray’r was ecstatic, again as before, he was lifted —
There our narration suspended, our guide sighed ever so deeply;
Only I stayed with him open in eye, on occasion I drifted
Lulled by the regular rhythm, sensations all making me sleepy:
Rumble of circuiting wheels on the rustic environ unfolding
Paced to the timely description of Abram’s Chaldean beginning,
Joining the seas of the late white harvest, the breezes withholding,
Insects in chirp and the wilderness greenery steadily thinning.
the four princes • another dream
Nimrod rides out • a truce with the princes
Abram and Lot depart • a slumbering caravan