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<tr><td>Lady Pu-abi

In the deathpits of Ur, Lady Pu-abi
listens for lyres, strings chirping like crickets,
lost and forgotten like goats in the thickets,
proud as the dhows that once left Abu Dhabi,
come to pay tribute to Lady Pu-abi.

Gone the gold gameboard, the lapis lazuli
chalice, the chokers, carnelians, agates --
taken like flesh by those graverobbing maggots.
Her slaves and her stalwarts, all stolen unduly,
along with her headdress of gold and lazuli.

Simoom's breath hisses along the Euphrates,
bringing her rumor, that date-sweet libation:
Men come for conquest yet cry liberation.
Names shift like sand dunes: Chaldeans, Kuwaitis.
Blood swirls like damascene down the Euphrates.

Bodies are buried near Lady Pu-abi,
guards for new palaces -- now mausoleums --
treasures replacing those lost to museums.
Prows part the waters, beyond Abu Dhabi,
laden with tribute for Lady Pu-abi.

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[center]<table bgcolor=white cellpadding=25 border=0><tr><td>I admire the aresting opening of this poem, and the great details, both visual and auditory. It's metrically deft, whether you think of it as accentual meter or a poem in trisyllabic feet--not easy to pull off something serious in those without having it become either monotonous or unintentionally funny! This one works because it does neither. The good use of repetition helps, and so do the clever rhymes. I'm wondering, though, if "lapis lazuli" is ever pronounced as "la ZOO li," as this poem requires: my dictionaries all say "LAH zuh li," which is the way I've always heard it. Help, anyone?

I was not clear, at first reading, whether "lost" and "proud" in stanza one apply to "Lady Pu-Abi, although that's what makes sense; the "crickets" at the end of line two seem possible at first glance. It would help, maybe to begin line three with "She is lost..." and so forth.

Stanza three, which prepares the way for that wonderfully ironic updating in stanza four, is the most touching part of the poem, to me, because of what it suggests about the dead: they appreciate rumor! Ostensibly they gossip, like us, and are still in love with the world they left. Subtle touch, and then that shift of names in an old geography full of associations. Beautiful poem that brings the immediacy of individual life to the impersonal news, right across time.

~Rhina

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Rhina,

I've always pronounced it as the poem uses it, and never been corrected. Of course, I'm deaf...

(robt)

I have always pronounced it as an anapest, like Rhina. But that makes it no less lovely at the line ends, and the rhyme with unduly troubles me not a whit. This was written just as we were about to invade Iraq, and I believed it to be an elegant and elliptical protest of a war I support. I absolutely adore the poem. Ouch, I meant DACTYL, he edited. LAZuli

I love this poem. It is so rich and of course I agree with its message. But even if I didn't I would still love it because its sounds and images are so intricately interwoven. It is a love poem for something precious that is under-valued . The beauty and the pain bring tears to my eyes. The sounds and meter of the poem remind me of the best serious poems of Edward Lear--and that is a compliment.
Rhina, I love your analysis of the poem.
Janet

The funny thing is, I don't even care whether this is an anti-war poem, I just love the drumbeat meter and all those wonderful feminine rhymes. And the alliteration and assonance are used here so skillfully, never too much or all clumped together, just beautifully distributed. It's all good, but the music makes it exceptional.

What Rose and others say. Wonderfully accomplished,
Margaret.

I admire the trochaic meter, both for its just-right measure of the material and for the skill of execution. One almost expects to hear it sung from a minaret at dusk. It is very difficult to do well; I think it is nearly perfect here.

Although it was written as a lamentation for the American invasion of Iraq, we could also think of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait a decade earlier when "men [came] for conquest yet [cried] liberation", or of the larger cycle of history of mankind's aggression. "Names shift like sand dunes" is a priceless line.

This is so mysterious and elemental, it seems right out of Faerie. Much of the effectiveness lies in the shock of realizing it's not about a legend in the mist, but our modern world.

Fantastic. Date booze in there. Very timely in terms of Iraq. Good use of regional delicacies....no pearls? Too bad. Of course, as a muslim and gulf resident for many years I am entirely biased for this poem. I don't think though that this bias is misplaced.

Congratulations on a Supreme effort, one that makes others stop, listen and research Pu-abi.

You're yearning for pearls in this one? Yes, nice touch--but on the other hand, think of all the readers who may have had enough of "pearl-like teeth" between cherry lips! They may have boycotts of their own to suggest! Slippery slope--oops, overused image--but slippery slope nevertheless, this demand for (or rejection of) certain images for thier own sake, without regard for thier organic fit ( or lack threof) in the specific poem in question. After all, the pearl (or crow, or dance, or moon) that seems all wrong in Poem X may be the very making of Poem Y.