Out From Babel #2

May 2009

More on the Babel problem. See #1

Out from Babel strung like a broken cable –
Up from the burning rubble of a shattered sun –
Jacob's ladder fallen to its lowest rung.
Who called it Babel and kept their tongue?

In the trough of one dune we forgot
the crest of the last. We sang harmony
with the wind and lost each note
before the arrival of the next, and
only in a perfect balance of dusk
could we grasp both day and night…

In those first days of the Annexation,
it was a common sight: two men would greet warmly,
even embrace – but thereafter
gain no understanding. The one
might see his friend turned
to madness, the other mocked viciously
by one trusted, or a foul demon
masquerading as one he loved.

To the observer, both strove patiently,
and with goodwill – yet it would come to blows,
and blood in the public square. And when the fog
was lifted, the terror that followed –

This and other madness consumed us –
The fall of the tower, too:
when one blueprint became, in our fractured eyes,
five hundred clashing structures…
How could it not? I myself capped
the fatal pillar, granite braced by a wooden arch.

Overnight, without knowing, one city became
thousands – each man a lost tribe unto himself.
That the babe still knew it's mother's breast,
We counted as kindness.