From �Technicians of the Sacred Expanded�: Genesis Three (Enuma Elish), with Commentary

Translation from Old Babylonian by Harris Lenowitz

When sky above had no name
          earth beneath no given name
   APSU       the first       their seeder
Deepwater
TIAMAT
  Saltsea     their mother     who bore them
                                                                mixed waters

 Before pasture held together

            thicket be found
no gods being
no names for them
no plans

the gods were shaped inside them

LAHMU AND LAHAMU were brought out

                                                                       named
while they grew
                 became great
ANSAR and KISAR were shaped
 Skyline       Earthline                  much greater

                                made the days long

                                added the years

ANU was their son

 Sky       their rival
ANSAR made his first son ANU his equal
Skyline                                 Sky
      ANU           NUDIMMUD
and Sky        got  Manmaker       equal
                              (EA)
NUDIMMUD
 Manmaker
   (EA)          his fathers' boss
                                             wide wise
                                            full knowing
                      ANSAR         strong
stronger than Skyline his father
no equal among his brother gods

The godbrothers      together

stormed in TIAMAT
                   Salt sea
stirred up TIAMAT's guts
                  Saltsea
rushing at the walls

         APSU

Not Deepwater hush their noise
TIAMAT
 Salt sea struck dumb
They did bad things to her
          acted badly, childishly
         APSU
until Deepwater             seeder of great gods
                           called up MUMMU
                                            Speaker:
MUMMU
Speaker     messenger     makes my liver. happy
                                         come!                            TIAMAT
                                                            Let's go see Saltsea

 They went                         TIAMAT  

           sat down in front of Saltsea
          (talk about plans for their first-born gods):

   APSU

Deepwater     opened his mouth      said
to TIAMAT              said loud:
      Saltsea
"The way they act makes me sick:
during the day               no rest
at night                          no sleep

I'll destroy them!

      stop their doings!
It'll be quiet again         we can sleep�

         TIAMAT

When Saltsea heard this
                                      she stormed
                                      yelled at her husband
                                      was sick
                                      alone:
                "Wipe out what we made?!
                 The way they act is a pain
                                                           but let's wait"

  MUMMU                                   APSU

 Speaker answered     advising Deepwater:           MUMMU
                                                             bad advice Speaker's
                                                                               ill-meant
"Go onl
               Put an end to their impertinence
                                                                   then
rest              during the day
sleep            at night�

When APSU       heard him

        Deepwater               his face gleamed
                                                                      for the hurts planned
                                                                               against his godsons
                                           hugged MUMMU
                                                         Speaker
                                           set him in his lap
                                           kissed him

 What they planned in conference was repeated to their first born
                                                                                         godsons

                                                                                               
They wept
         milled around     distressed
         kept silence                                                             

COMMENTARY

     Source: Translation from Enuma Elish by Harris Lenowitz, originally published in Acheringa/Ethnopoetics, new series, vol. 1, no. 1, 1975, pp. 31-33, & later in H. Lenowitz & Charles Doria: Origins: Creation Texts from the Ancient Mediterranean (Doubleday & Company, New York, 1975).

     (1) The god-world of Enuma Elish starts in turbulence & struggle: a universe the makers/poets knew or dreamed-into-life & felt the terror/horror at its heart.  It is this rush & crush of primal elements the poetry here translates into gods & monsters, reflecting as it does a natural & human world in chaos/turmoil.  The scene it leaves for us, replete with names of gods & powers, follows a story line encountered in many other times & places.  In the Babylonian Enuma Elish, tracing back to still earlier Sumerian sources, the two primeval forces are the god Apsu (Deepwater/Freshwater) & the goddess Tiamat (Saltsea), whose offspring will eventually destroy them both & lead the way for the triumphant reign of the new god Marduk, killing the goddess off at last & using her severed corpse to form the earth & sky, with humans coming in their wake.  The ferocity of word & image remains a key to poetic mind both then & now: the dark side of the joy & beauty that would be needed too to make their world & ours complete.

     (2)  �The Babylonian Creation Myth ... relates how the universe evolved from nothingness to an organized structure with the city of Babylonat its center. When the primordial sweet and salt waters � male Apsu and female Tiamat � mingled, two beings appeared, Lahmu and Lahamu, that is, mud and muddy. The image suits the southern Babylonian view over the Persian Gulf perfectly: when the sea recedes, mud arises. A chain reaction had started [...]� (Mark Van De Mieroop, Philosophy Before the Greeks: The Pursuit in Ancient Babylonia, 2016, p.4)

     And further: �The ancient Babylonians certainly were not humanists but deeply committed to a theocentric view of the world.  Yet, they believed that humans could have a firm knowledge of reality as the gods had created it, and continued to direct it, because at the time of creation the gods had provided the tools for understanding, as the Enuma Eli� shows. Creation in that myth was a work of organization: Marduk did not fashion the universe ex nihilo. Rather, he created by putting order into the chaos of Tiamat�s bodily parts. And just as he ordered the physical world, he organized knowledge and structured it through writing [...] the Babylonian theory of knowledge was [...] fundamentally rooted in a rationality that depended on an informed reading. Reality had to be read and interpreted as if it were a text. [...] �I read, therefore I am� could be seen as the first principle of Babylonian epistemology.� (Ibid, p.10)

      (3) �What�s presented here, the Babylonian genesis retold, is the paramount interest, & the work of the ones who present it is an interest almost equal; & all of it crucial to the unfolding, changing recovery of cultures & civilizations that has now entered its latest phase.  To bring across this sense of myth as process & conflict, Harris Lenowitz & Charles Doria, working as both poets & scholars in Origins, make use of all those �advances in translation technique, notation, & sympathy� developed over the last half century, from the methods of �projective verse� to those of etymological translation or of that recovery of  the oral dimension of the poem that the present editor & others have, wisely or not, spoken of elsewhere as �total translation.�  The picture that emerges is one of richness, fecundity at every turning, from the first image of poem on page to the constantly new insights into the possibilities of �origin.�  And this allows that �clash of symbols� which, those like Paul Ricoeur tell us, is both natural to mind & forms its one sure hedge against idolatry.�  (Adapted from J.R. in the pre-face to Origins, 1975)

      (4) �We live in an age in which inherited literature is being hit from two sides, from contemporary writers who are laying bases of new discourse at the same time that ... scholars ... are making available pre-Homeric and pre-Mosaic texts which are themselves eye-openers.� (Charles Olson, �Homer & Bible,� 1957)

N.B.  In the translation, above, god names are underlined throughout, with the English translation directly beneath.

Jake Marmer: A New Poem, �The Law of Returning Lost Objects�

After Talmud Bava Metzia, 21A

On seeing Roman Vishniac�s �Vanished World� exhibit

when is an object considered lost?

when it has been disassembled, crumbled, or scattered
so that it can no longer be described
as a sum total of itself
when it can no longer be touched or held
when consciousness can�t wrap around it as does around experience
when no action can be directed towards it
other than falling
upon it
as in falling upon the scattering
fruit that rolls down the hill
money flying across the field

if you fall upon scattered money it is yours

if you fall upon a scattered thought it is now your thought
scattered memory and the lost image become your possession                                                 

you�re now in possession

in possession of a memory 
possessed in the image 
possessed with words that aren�t yours
with names no one has given you

when is an object considered lost?

when it has been purposefully abandoned
when the loser has abandoned hope of finding it

only reasonable hope can be considered hope

like the hope of finding an escaped dog
your car keys

the hope of finding a lost wad of unclipped money in the field or an upturned basket of  

     apples at the top of the hill

is not considered a hope
it is not a hope directed towards a tangible object
that can be touched
or perceived as whole
that can be described as sum total of itself
in this case there�s no such thing as hope
the items� identity is that of scattering 

if you�re the finder you�re owner, the one in possession �

of the image, of lost letters

these letters may have spelled     

            ze shaar tzadikim yavou bo
�this is the gate righteous come through�
letters may have spelled
�welcome
our rebbe our teacher�
you may have found these letters on a photograph of lost posters
lost grime lost passersby

the gate was collapsing even before it was lost
and you wonder about the lost righteousness
and the �welcome�
as you now welcome the loss
at your own gate
along with letters and grime and torn posters
and you can also welcome righteousness
all day long
unsure of the sound the word �righteousness� makes
repeat it till it loses all meaning
comes loose in your mouth
righteousness
till your teeth start rotting with sound you�re coming into
possession of righteousness you�re trying to welcome
it is ravishing your mouth
the rebbe the teacher has no presence
the presence was scattered
but the words are yours and what�s there to do
with words �the rebbe the teacher�
they�re possessing you
they�re impossible words
in the world you know as world they�re impossible
you�d like to return these words
but the hope has been relinquished
and the lost hope is now yours
you are now in possession of the lost hope

when is an object considered lost?

items considered worthless do not need to be returned

when is an object considered lost?

when there�re no identifying marks              
money, for instance, has no identifying marks
and neither does language
the owner relinquishes hope
the object becomes ownerless
does the moment when language when image turn
ownerless happen at the point of scattering
or at the point of relinquishing hope
or at the point of someone�s falling upon it?

you�re falling at the gate of righteousness

on somebody�s lost words
or else the gate falls on you as you�re trying to pass
for a word yourself
trying to pass for the word �rabbi� or �teacher�
the whole gate collapses on you
the law of possession applies

when is an object considered lost?

when it cannot be identified through its location
things found at the bank of a river cannot be identified
as fish and seaweed cannot be identified �
as belonging
to anything other than the river and themselves

things found in a museum cannot be identified

can be labeled but not identified
the identity of these objects is that of scattering
you can come into possession become possessed
with the story of scattering the story of loss
you can become the Great Rav of the lost history of objects
and the lost gate where every object is a scattering
where every teaching is a relinquished hope

who�d want to pass through that gate or be welcomed by it

you�re in possession of falling
obsession with falling upon the lost objects you�re in possession
of names you were not given

it is a positive commandment to return a lost object

even if it has been scattered
even if the hope has been relinquished
even if dialogues split into half-thoughts and the half-thoughts
do not add up to the sum total of themselves
it is simply the matter of finding
who these thoughts can be returned to
who is the owner of these losses

isn�t the finder of the scattered objects

also the sole owner also the magnet the lining and the sleeve of loss
the gate of righteousness welcomes those who return
welcomes those returning
as lost objects
in exchange for fulfillment
of the positive commandment
of curating an exhibition or observing one or simply nailing
the pictures
when you�re on your way
to the gate of such fulfillment
according to the tradition
no harm will fall upon you
this fulfillment isn�t yours
but belongs to the voice
welcoming you to the gate
welcoming you to the dream loosened on a tripod
the face behind the image
the face that approximates the loss
you can be thankful and relieved to find it isn�t your own face
this discovery might make you a rabbi or a teacher or curator
you may be welcomed at an altogether separate gate
and subsequently scattered as a commandment
and the law of returning objects
will continue to apply 

* * * * * * * 

Author�s Note.  There's a section of the Talmud that deals with laws of returning lost objects. Particularly poignant are discussions of items which, due to various circumstances, could never be returned. I was struck with the thought that the genre of found art, at its greatest moments, is, too, a failing attempt at restitution, expression of one's inability to either give back or properly own that which comes into our possession, and immediately begins to possess us.  

I was invited to respond, through poetry, to the exhibit of Roman Vishniac's photography, held at the Contemporary Jewish Museum this winter. As is well known, Vishniac's photography of the impoverished Eastern European shtetls is considered to be the last glimpse of these communities. Thus, "A Vanished World".  

What does it mean to encounter - find - this vanished, lost, world? What can be returned - and how? What, or who, is being possessed? What about one's own family history - and possession of those losses?  

There's a tradition of celebrating the memory of the departed through study, and interpretation of Talmudic texts. Engaging in a "write-through" as a form of study/hermeutics/ritual is a resonating attempt - one that, too, resonates with the poetic practice of writing from within the "vacuum in which the dead... were free to speak" - that is, J.R.'s own Khurbn poems.    

In addition to the text above, you can listen to the audio recording of this poem (or the whole set), performed live and in collaboration with John Schott (guitar) at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, surrounded by Vishniac's images. 

 

 

 

Amish Trivedi: from �FuturePanic�: What We Remembered Before

 

 

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WHAT WE REMEMBERED BEFORE

 

A face climbing

atop an old       

starter motor,    

buried down

and spit-taken

ahead of slender

 

white ether gloves and

parade sheets pulled

over and beginning to

absorb the leaded

ground. Given way

again to

 

another incendiary thin

sprawl but never

 

                                    again, a word

                                    that means a

                                    finger tracing the

 

paths along the arch

of skin near any

finger other than your

 

own: a set                of known

                                    hands soldered together

                                    that even heated will

                                   

                                    begin to crown.

 

Fixtures that break against the ice: moon

light parches a dry throat to

choke and stall out. In way before ash,

we heard vibrations of soil we reached

into, a shaded space beyond your

mouth that gives growth to others.

 

As a memory

just as it was done before

clearings came. Another sensation that

 

comes in when otherness vacates. A descent

and catching the hands in an escape

pose, bringing brickarms

to spin into another form so

brilliant the eyes retract into

their holster. Rearranged

 

to form new compounds

built on the generations

of freedom we

rebelled from,

 

the glass lip tasted

 

but prevented from

blistering under a

skin we've already

known. The next

 

year is always easier

than this one but I

 

                        realize I'm expected

                        to speak in projections

 

that never seem

to clear the teeth

 

utterly.

 

This sequestration, our lungs alighting in

series to develop

a texture its own,

a stigma we designed on time divided. Out pasture

ignition point, the right mixture but rich

with air or ventilated improperly. The

gaze we have again. In

 

the pressured moments beyond

this one, we'll seek

 

against and filtrate our

devoured like a steadied destruction

we cannot believe, alleviated

before us. In the summer the

 

ships go through

the bridge and

 

we hear a cantilever of

swallowed dusk

 

reintroduce it to a

native, painted earth. We

 

                                    were what we ought to

                                    have been all a-

                                    long, not just a

 

reminder of the room

before the

 

reverberation. This tipped

another time

 

without being heard,

satisfied to

fear. Where we were

 

is against a wall too

tall to hold

 

us backwards in an

 

ocean. A dream too

buried by dirt

to carry another

feeling alongside

it. Split along a

vein, adequate again, I

know. This or

 

any justification to

breathe alone in your

reference besides

the terror that

 

seethes through

an absent language. An

                                    absence sustained through

                                    notion, anything matter lacks

                                    it collects as prey, a retraction.

 

If anything that is unseen shows

the depth of another shift,

 

we'll realign ourselves to be

any different kind of

place which cannot remain

 

whenever an unheard system tenses and

recovers. Our tract, re-purposed to

 

                                                begin in seas of

                                                matter� axon, a

                                               

being. Let the litmus be our light

ahead. Your back arcing there

somewhere, a little exposed but

 

I cover my eyes to

unsee you and cover my arms so that I

may undeceive. Say the same thing

 

you always say to everyone else but say

it to the gathered room. In

 

memory, speech

begins as a seed

 

piercing. The things we are begin in

a spark from

a hand and out again, covered,

mistaken and divulged as

certainty.

 

Weaned hour, deplored moment on

the way to another envelopment. Bray

above a roar

 

                        to sound inflexible, really,

                        and putting recognition

                        on. Regain

 

a swollen block where

we will to unknow,

move about the surrounding

spaces. A light out on

 

                                    a stair

                                    well to

                                    ascertain we

 

begin again, a glow too

welcoming to speak

through. Though the air

seems to push us, it's

a retribution from sin. After

 

worry resolves, it

plays, ringing in and over

where everything that

can grow

does not. If

 

our floods are the same, I hope

what we know is masked by

shame and brings sense back

to the land we settled.

 

[NOTE.  Amish Trivedi has for some time been a close associate at Poems and Poetics, some of his earlier work having appeared in the postings of February 25, 2011 and October 7, 2012.  In the present offering he steps forward as a poet working at full capacity, to create, like the best of us, a poetry that tests his & our furthest capabilities & fears.  I wait to see what follows with great anticipation.  (J.R.)] 

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