[Carol Taylor]

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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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