Conversations with Nebuchadnezar

Amitabha Mukerjee

The other day in Dhahran
In a dark room, no windows,
I sat face to face with senile Nebuchadnezar -
It was three: afternoon.
Around me on a simulation video screen
The lights of Babylon twinkled past
A solitary oil flume
Burning soul-less in the desert darkness beyond.
I piloted my jet over the ruins
My chair shaking simulated by my false motion.
"Your accursed city," I pointed out to him -
"Mother of fornication, drinking the blood of saints
From goblets of gold."
He protested mildly -
"Is civilization progress?"
But that was last week.

Now it is night, and through my cockpit window
Sliver of moon gleaming fragmented on the waters of Shatt-el-Arab,
Sweeping down the valley of the Tigris
The boatlights from the river dimly below me,
And I am in your presence again,
Nebuchadnezar.
The restored blue facade - gate to your lost kingdom,
Looms up from the desert plain,
Just as they had in those countless dry runs.
Fading deer prancing moonlit
On blue glazed walls
The hanging garden,
Boom,
Your face disintegrates,
First emperor of recorded time.
Your soldiers' footsteps that echoed on these brick walls
No more.
Maidens that whispered on moonlit desert air
No more.
No more the voice of the archaelogical child,
With coin from Assyria clutched between the first metacarpals.
In the light of the ack-ack tracers in front
I see the dust rising
The metallic shudder of cannon jolts my seat
With realism beyond all computer simulations,
The adrenalin ebbing slowly as I turn back.

I lift the intercom into CNN.
"How do you feel about Mesopotamia, Mr. Pilot?" says the man,
"For my part I am awfully sorry about it," I say,
The horizon stabilizing again -
"The King - God bless him -
Will say for reasons of state,
That he never meant for this to happen."
I echo across the living rooms of the world.

But that dead emperor still haunts me -
Civilization and progress:
Is it just one definition chasing the tail of another?
All the diggings and the ruins,
The datings and the diaries,
The seventh wonder of the ancient world -
Where is the answer?
Boom.

Over the marshes of Shatt-el-Arab a flock of pelicans -
Graceful pot-bellied beaks in tranquil predawn light.
And inside my headphone a vast silence.