Canticle on the Triarchy
XXXIII
I saw in a dream,
As it were the sun, and the moon,
And eleven stars worshipping me.
Precious were hours between intermediate conflicts, he averred,
Not as if bargained reprieve, but of true providential diffraction —
Taking a drink of his water, the rabbi continued, for favored,
Yea, for the favor of God is upon peace-makers in action,
Those who have spake for the sake of reducing the waste of dissension
Even among good brothers, for war on the virtuous whittles,
Shaves on the soul to produce fine dust we have called indiscretion:
Making the soul pusillanimous, one who detracts and belittles,
Schisms and squanders! again we observe in the family mentioned,
Abram and Lot and Terah, Eleazer as well, in our story
Whereso with king by the wet-land rivers primeval conventioned
Near great Babylon: evenings were moory, the mornings were hoary,
(Much is my warning to you each), Nimr’d and both of his allies
Planned to deliver the ziggurat shortly for new veneration
Though in the wilderness west was his son, prototypal of rabbis,
Plotting to come for rebuttal and witness to wroth generation:
When it was time, both men would return and reply to the prefect
Lighting the ziggurat’s fires of worship with horrible, gruesome,
Painful descriptions of what God harbors for worship with defect,
She’ol is nothing to scoff at, and much as was said by the twosome,
Even so, man in his heart of iniquity longs everlasting,
Quietly suffering evil mundanity, blurry and manic,
Till he has finally died, but no man is so willing for fasting
That he can worship in favor, but rather, in petulant panic,
Listens to numinous senses, and such was the argument rueful
Made by Terah and his king at the bid of the peoples’ demanding,
Whereas in truth two men of the opposite leaning were truthful
Wishing to stop it entirely, leaving no ziggurat standing,
Hereas the story continues, for Abram debating for faithful,
Cognizant love of the Lord, and on steps to the city alluding,
Babylon nascent, were senses delighted and piety playful
Rather than serious, imaged and unperilled in mindfully brooding;
After confronting the people in secret he spoke to the masses
Gathered together in market and temple the words as are follows:
Countrym’n, when it is season, and each constellation so passes
Carrying dawn on its lap, we intuit a Master it hallows,
Whether the Taurus of Spring or the Scorpion signaling Autumn,
Cleaving the one from the other; and splitting the different seasons,
Lions and Capricorns also reverse from the bottom
Solar repose; and the catalogues built to interpret the reasons
Fail to denote the exemplar of each: for the motions of spirit
Shift as a wind, as the name may connote, and so both are its motions:
Those who are capable therefore of hearing with ears, may he hear it!
Many who heard him indeed were perplexed by the primitive notions
Which so enraged both Abram and Lot as it happened the two flew,
Fitfully, hither frustration: for One, His detection the sense lacks,
Never determined in speech, and before your conception so knew you,
Utterly, even your mother and father were ignorant thence back
What for your name and your kind — and their own kind! — even so, pray tell,
Humans betwixt black She’ol abyss and celestial wonder
Equally dark but for light, but in neither does latrea pay well:
None of the things of creation, in none of it, over and under,
Merits the sacrifice due to the Artist of Motion and Measure
Therein responsible over His creatures in keeping His order
Called by us nature, for which it all permeates, meet to His pleasure;
Now I shall speak: for His song, I shall sing; for His gate, I am porter;
Even His flames, I shall stoke, for the heavens and earth are abounding
Always with infinite riddles of glory, a glory of knowing,
Which is obscured in the clutches of idols, as what you are founding,
Which is of honor to servants and not to the Master bestowing,
Heartless indeed! if you slave for the slave, but for Master are idle,
Taking the tasks from the steward, neglecting your personal duty,
Lest you confess and so buck up the saddle and bite up the bridle
Willing to gain for yourself God’s treasure and spoils and booty
Meant for the good man willing to die for His sake and His glory,
Freely endowed! and the listeners often agreed indiscreetly,
Taking to riot or protest, the details a different story;
Now I describe but the rulers’ response, for his city, completely,
Grew quite restless and ever disturbed as it churned to dissenting
While his allies in princes endeavored to counter persuasion
Either with force or with better persuasion, and each, unrelenting,
Came to a boil the eve of eclipse, for the king on occasion
Opened his bountiful vaults to the people for common enjoyment;
Even so, soon the division of loyalties rose to a treble
Stopping the work, for a time as was said, but to cease their employment —
Books as they close; at the jerk of a knife; at the drop of a pebble —
Final as endings could come was the pause in the work on the tower,
Such was the emperor eager to better consolidate power,
Now I shall speak, he assured himself, I am now in my hour,
Lest I corrupt my endowment by God and so leave it to sour;
Naught as he stood had he spoke to his court and attempted assurance
Over the tower he sought, and but also Terah, and his steward,
Kin of the king, were committed to call it a test of endurance,
Even from God, for the righteous shall suffer, be scalded and skewered,
Harried and handed to death if it pleases the Lord th’y’re confessing
Since it is discipline fathers determine for those of their rearing
Making all sons; so no matter the hands of but human suppressing,
When God strengthens the virtuous, nothing is worthy of fearing;
Abram and Lot had so vowed to refuse for the moment their razor,
Growing their beards, and as well not taking to the vine’s grape,
While Terah and the court and the king and his son Eleazer
Toasted to God for their plenty amid stone palace in fine drape,
One was committed to feast and the other to fast, and the two courts,
Growing in number by day, were approaching the build’s consecration
That it receive dedication to heaven and gods in their due course,
Namely the one true God, as His ministers’ last destination,
Which for Terah, Eleazer and Nimr’d is praised by extension;
Though disagreement had flourished, the emperor’s foes were imprisoned,
Some were detained for a period, others a longer detention,
Each was opposed to his tower, and many were firmly decisioned,
Most were elites from the militant caste or a mix from the peasants,
Most of the peasants agreed with the king, so as well with the highest,
Oldest of princes, but even so, Abram and Lot had their presence;
Much as a man is to cross on a river at whence it is driest,
Abram and Lot were keen on convincing the easiest princes:
Naught was a rubric for rhetoric early in genesis hist’ry,
Therefore indeed it was miles to victory, fought for in inches,
Even in tandem to ev’ryd’y living affairs with no vict’ry,
That both men were expected to manage a house of belongings,
Servants and live-stock, thus it was difficult facing the palace
Giving the orders against, who from tapestried windows and awnings
Suffered no want, for their drink was in gold, and their steps were on lapis;
Even so, righteous Terah had determined the wish for invasion
Which had incepted the tower, and thereof decided to keep contribution,
Making the structure a canton for another, a better occasion:
God might use it to station his angels, in time, retribution;
Nothing could hinder the Lord or His hosts in the onsl’ght of ages
Once He descends to its cooked bricks, ready for fresh war
Which as he gazed from the court on ascending, impervious stages
Chuckled Terah at the pitiful ends men wistfully press for,
While his son and his nephew abided in derelict alleys
Shadowed by monstrous constructions, infernal abodes of the idols
Brought to the center of cities from orgies in precipice valleys,
Frozen in time and in space, and how fragile their image and vitals,
Risked by the hands of the poor and the cavalcade armies of aging;
Abram and Lot had their rest in the midst of recruiting the nations
Come to the city for work on the tower, in tow for its staging
Bricks they created from cooking the sands of the seas’ enervation,
Clay contributions becoming the walls and the floors to a great height,
Bringing along with the bricks their impoverished, hungry and wretched
Wishing to work for their food, and their sages arrived and await night
Tracing the shapes in the heavens, the signs of the spirits embedded,
Calling the bears and the rams and the clownish chimeras their masters
While they practiced their miser’ble craft, their arrays of predictions
Worth but a moment of suff’ring from even unvigilant fasters,
Yea, it was darker an age than we know, for their pitiful fictions
Rose in the skies each night, and their tales were ridiculous, sterile,
Spurious — yea, I digress — and the vaults of the king were supplying,
Feeding the poor, but the waging-and-wealthy were never so feral
That their allegiance be bought, as their brethren the wageless were buying,
Given the wageless are brutally fragile to king’s benediction,
Nothing so dangerous, yea, than to dwell in the sight of the king’s eye;
Both the alliances, middle and bound’ries, persised affriction
Even to riots and burning of property chaos could bring by,
Heaping the flurry of bodies inhabiting Ur and the cities
Asshur and Babel up each with the evils of populous places,
Fevers and proximal hatred and boors that nobody pities
Working for bread, whose survival is written on merciless faces:
Scuffing the cold stone slabs with their names and graffitious jesting,
Drinking by day warm alcohol, eating by night their refreshment,
Such was the fatal condition the empire now was investing
Bring the tribes of the world by their poorest for city’s enmeshment
Bring a great immigration of peoples to dwell and assemble,
Even to take from their banks of supplies, and forgone was discernment,
Since in the age I describe, each man was as brothers resemble,
Making it rather impossible thus to devise a deterrent
Capable then of excluding the foreigner till they had eaten,
Forcing the emperor’s hand and requir’ng a rapid rescinding
Lest he be robbed, but he shifted the blame so as not to be beaten:
Not on the alien, rather the ever-perpetual sinning
Found in their city’s elite, as to say, by their ruthless oppression
Over the poor, and foregoing the tasks as assigned to their betters:
Striving by day to fulfill obligations akin to obsession,
Ruling the towns and the temples was work, he had said, with its fetters;
Pinning the middle betwixt poor men and the men of the palace
Further diminished the place of the emperor over the middle;
Even so, such was the great desperation, a trick with no malice,
Only survival and perilous plots, yea, far from a riddle,
Under the prefects’ attention the morning so ghastly and hoary
When in the settling frost of the wintry descent of an old sun —
Though it could not quite suitably capture the point of the story,
Criticize much as you like, such pragmatists never have told one —
Rebels redounded and struck at the throats of their masters
Burning the plentiful food-stores down to the bellicose cinders,
Smashing the idols with hammers and carefully ripping the plasters
Out of the tower’s interior, knowing the thought of it hinders
More than the action itself, a discouragem’nt toward its building
Signaling more the engorging of violent, collective dissenting
Which may as well grow swell in the time it shall take for re-gilding,
Shingl’ng and plastering; though not driving the crowds to repenting,
Even so, seldom a laborer finds it befitting a project
That he repeat his exertions in tartaran image of torment;
Thus the rebellious hands had achieved their unreticent object
Since for the future of Babel the tower was missing adornment,
Stripping the site of its tentative glory by hands unbelieving,
Which was sufficient a cause for the court of the emperor’s fury
Wishing to find an appropriate measure to sign their receiving
Thereof the wicked report, and without any consternate jury
Chose to respond with an equal reprisal with violent reaction,
Which is a grievous mistake — an aside, I may say in addition,
Which is if rulers refrain from a full-force blow to the faction,
Fomenting victory shout and a great escalating condition
Wrought by encouraging further distress by their meager reprovement —
Thereof the princes aligning with Abram and Lot had determined
Further destruction of property while Terah was in movement
Toward a new destination, for while he works as he sermoned,
Even so, what he observed in his fellows disturbed him so greatly
That he departed for Babel itself, as was called by the title,
Gate of the Gods, he had wondered for what true purpose the gate be,
Given the gathering hosts by a gate could be accidents vital
That an invasion was gathered and moving on heaven’s defenses;
This was the rumor Terah was intending to better uncover,
Might he be somewhat complicit with pagans, misled by the senses,
Worshipping stars or the planets instead of the Heavenly Other,
God of transcendent beyond, and the story his king had prepared him
Served as a lie of convenience to shatter and tear and dismember
Those who opposed his designs, so by Babel he stared and he stared grim
Watching the work on the tower, and soon he was ill to remember
When he and Abram had cursed it to dust in the shadow of evening
Prior to going, united, to pillory Nimr’d to kneeling
Down in the face of the God but unseen; he gave to his grieving
What had divided a father and son to so quarry a feeling
Such had Terah mourned seeing the tower become but a tower,
What he expected it since the beginning to build up to heaven,
Nevertheless, he had comfort and courage to not, as it were, cower,
Even to death or admitting he fell for political leaven,
Since he could take heart knowing he stood on a precipice narrow
Twixt a denial of man and exalting of heavenly doing;
Therefore Terah was expedient newly intending to harrow
Courts of the empire’s making; regarding the violence ensuing,
Such was Terah undecided if such could be even avoided,
Since in the dawn age man had no proper conception of mankind,
Not of his place in the cosmos nor what in him might be exploited,
Since in his nature was wet with the ink that God’s own hand signed
Whether a man was responsible therefore of what he persuaded
Out of another, or otherwise man was the shepherd of one soul,
Since the arrival of kings was as new as the lands they pervaded,
What can a man owe, therefore? and then, with no cymbal or drumroll,
Rabbi desisted his story a while, and left us with quiet
Quenched by the first of the sounds of the east with its buzzing and humming
Creatures unseen in the wilderness, watching with vengeance and riot
Even remembering man as its traitor, the violent, the cunning,
Much as the righteous Terah had observed, in the tower, and man’s heart,
Therewith a tomb for the false god Bel and his square constellation
Drawn at the base of the structure, a secret design from the plan’s start
Wherein the emperor blended religion’s poor imitation
Like how the rivers would merge in the nexus of Babylon’s flood-plains
Eked in the egress of petulant summers and cruelty winters,
Whereas the wadis of Israel sunk up until we had mud-rains
Making our rains but a warning to kings and a blessing to vinters.
Division of the four prophets • riots and alliances
political and class divisions • the tower is plundered
Terah recognizes the deception • the rabbi ceases