With fragments from the Hymns of Inanna, the oldest poems known to us
For the donkey, white with dust,
The flatbed cart seems too heavy to pull at first
But she flicks her ears at the touch of Yusuf’s switch
And the rubber tyres turn lightly.
Do not go with slow noble steps.
Dust salts the creases of Yusuf’s face,
Casts him into an old man.
Good marriage he made,
Sweet is the sleep heart to heart
The carpenter with big hands
And Maryam, professor of ancient history
Who can talk in centuries-
Her lectures once loosed bright water
From chisel-rhymes carved on ancient stones
Washing her students with strange torrents
Her tongue recites in cool lapis.
That was before the university was blasted
And the sheep fold was given to the four winds.
Maryam slumps against Yusuf’s shoulder
Still singing in her sleep
Oh Inanna
Who at twilight makes the firmament wonderful.
Her blue shawl is powdered white
As if a crown of stars has been ground to dust
Above her head
For faceless angels have broken from their graven slabs
And unbolted the gates of thunder
Treading across the day sky,
Gifted with brimstone and bolts of iron
You throw your firebrands across the earth
To pulse concrete back into sand, shale and water
As the pitiless bull flaunts it brawn.
Sting of tinnitus whines after each percussion
But even now two dark eyed boys,
White against grey, with hoarse voices
Hawk cigarettes to no one on the rupture
That used to be a street.
If my sister’s child wanders – let the child be protected
Let the child be blessed.
At the hospital forecourt the white donkey halts.
I will watch over your house of life
Murmurs Maryam as she wakes –
With her hands across her belly.
Blanket entrails sprawl from an Ambulance
And a pool of black blood.
People walk hitherwise with dust
In their wounded mouths.
Yusuf is old at the end of his road;
The carpenter beyond himself.
Set up a lament for me among the ruins
By the house of desolation
Maryam of the sapphire eyes
Brings her mouth close to heaven and close to the earth
‘No room here’ she says. ‘Not even a stable.’
– Steven O’Brien is the editor of The London Magazine, the world’s oldest literary journal. He is a widely published poet. His most recent collections are Scrying Stone and Dark Hill Dreams. He has also recently published The Great Game: An Imperial Adventure with Endeavour Press. He lectures at the University of Portsmouth, where he leads the MA in Creative Writing. He is also Visiting Fellow of Creative Writing at University College Chichester. He contributed this poem to the Palestine Chronicle.
