Okay; well, work prevented any drafting with the bulls poem until today and here's something I've just completed in between insect tasks, lol.
John, I've merged our poems; I hope that's okay with you. Feel free to make any suggestions for improvement :-)
Ye have not danced
'Oh, but I have!' Word-Bird ;>)
You straight-winged bulls with the blank heads of men,
you watchers at the gate in Khorsabad,
show me the way to Sargon. And the bulls
see all that nears, as if prepared to step
down from their plinth to ward off any evil.
Your royal line is gone, and you, preferred
to some bright room in Paris. But your dead
are they now free? Is your long vigil through?
Shall I now bend the knee, remove each shoe?
The crowd mills by. And suddenly a bird
alights upon the head of one old bull
and then the second; both begin to speak:
'What's that? Remove each shoe? Well, if you must;
and bend at knee? Right-ho, then. We don't mind.
It's hard to care: our souls are cloaked in dust;
our eyes so dimmed, we might as well be blind.
'You'd better stand and put your shoes back on
if you're intent on going on a trip
to Trumpton, was it? No? Ah, King Sargon
and Khorsabad, it's that way. Off you skip!
'Hmm, wait. King Sargon's dead, his city razed;
our memories are dim and dusty too.
We stood so low and lowly and unpraised
for aeons, maybe, it might seem to you.
'We have a sense of movement to the place
where now we stand and watch through squinty eyes;
oh it is such a dull and chilly space
without our golden sands and cobalt skies.
'We are so tired of guarding nothing here
and wish some higher power would transport
our souls to somewhere far beyond this sphere
where we can guard for kings with joyous snort.'
Thus speak the bulls; and once again the bird
alights upon each head; then does a dance!
The bulls are silent then. say not a word
but only smile and smile, as if in trance.
Clay cast his net and fished. And every god
the Earth had seen the living and the dead
rose up as if on pillows through the sod.
They wandered up to fill Clays teeming head.
Thoth entered. In the silence, Dagon swam
up from the depths. Clay trembled, which was wise.
The looming gods are quick to anger, and
escape our minds escape our peering eyes.
What is their thinking? Whim and bare command.
This was a problem. Clay was in a jam.
🐮 🐮
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