When the sky still had no name
when the earth still had not been born
and when I was a child like all the others,
clenching the hem of my dusty dishdasha between my teeth
and running after lost butterflies in the streets,
I saw Tiamat carrying her murderous beasts
through the thunderstorm:
the seven-headed serpent
the great lion, the foaming-in-the-mouth wolf,
the scorpion man
the ox fish and the stone dragon.
I remember my father in his oil-stained blue overalls
taking me with him
to the blazing fire in Babagurgur.
There I smelt Eternity
free-flowing through white pipelines
from Ur to H3
from Chokur Alley to Weissenseer Weg in Berlin,
through its famous wall.
At holiday-time we often went to fancy-dress parties
where bears imitated old Turkoman women
coming back from the vegetable market,
or we'd visit the poorhouses for retired holy men
to hear the magicians tell of the mad god Merdoch
who slashed at Tiamat
with his razor sword
and cut her in two
making from her the earth and the sky,
and from the blood of her husband
whose head he severed with an axe
he created the human race.

Sitting on my high bench
I surveyed the scene,
the whole of mankind parading in front of me:
I saw Noah rowing in his ship towards land
and al-Mutanabbi reciting his poems
to the winds in the desert,
blind Homer guiding Odysseus to Ithaca,
Garibaldi's artillery firing on the clouds,
Napoleon on his horse galloping
from hell to Corsica
and the Macedonian, Alexander the Great,
leading his troops along the Silk Road
returning to holy Babel.
I saw the traitor, Judas, and his fellow disciples
expound their teachings
through hired loudspeakers at carnivals and feasts,
I saw Rimbaud offering his favourite slave girl to me
in the vanished Garden of Eden
and I saw on the shores of Buwaib,
by hungry Jaikur,
al-Sayyab waiting
to hand over his poet's papers
so I could intercede for him on Judgement Day.

So many people passed by and disappeared
while others drowned in the Flood,
so many people, but I never heard
the grinding of their teeth
on those very chilly nights.

And still the sky had no name.