With or Without an Epitaph

AN ANCIENT CITY
WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

The Palaces of Nimroud Restored, 1851
by James Fergusson (1808 –1886)

From the 1853 collection of scholar and excavator
Sir Austen Henry Layard (1817-1894)

Where to find Nimrud on the map:
20 miles south of Mosul / Nineveh

Not shown on map:
Jerwan is 25 miles north of Mosul / Nineveh
Why these three ancient cities: Jerwan, Nimroud, and Nineveh?

First of all, let me say that if you are sitting down to read the poems of contemporary American, Jim Barnes, you had better have a World Atlas handy, because you are going to need it! In a good way! The geological and emotional strata of these poems run deep and wide. Five college towns in Ohio -- can you trace the route across the State? Small hometowns in Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, with names unknown to many (well known to me). Cafes, museums, ruins, villas -- all over Europe! You must envision where they are, where the poet has been and takes you now, where you may one day go on your own steam. E.g., The Fertile Crescent:

At Jerwan

Stretching south toward Nineveh
the fertile lands Sennacherib
surveyed have now neither grain nor gold
for the hand holding compass and fold.

Long before the droning night came
down for the spoils and the wind with blame
for the deadly absence and the fall,
frowning figures left their places

on the crumbling marble monuments
and sank into the dry river bed
where the hot hand that fell still means
to fall on the holy heads of gods.

No gardens hanging from the banks,
no stone aqueducts now standing
lone, level, or otherwise.

Far from
Ishtar and Nineveh only this:
dust, thirst, desert despair,
the dream of Sennacherib gone wrong.

by Jim Barnes (b 1933)
in Sundown Explains Nothing, 2019

Artist’s Depiction of the Jerwan Aqueduct
Sennacherib (750 - 681 BC) ruled Assyria from 705 BC to 681 BC, and beautified the capital city of Nineveh with aqueducts, canals, hanging gardens, temples, and a “palace without a rival.” Yet, as Barnes points out, all that magnificence has been replaced by "lone, level" sands, eerily distant. The reader is reminded of proud fictional (or maybe not) Ozymandias, king of kings:

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 - 1822)

My son Ben, on vacation in London, also took a moment to remind me of Ozymandias, sending me this photograph of the tomb of eccentric 17th-century medical quack Lionel Lockyer. Ben added his own clever caption . . .

"Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair."

. . . and the following commentary:

"On the other hand we've all heard of Ozymandias,
so maybe he was on to something?"

Or at least Shelley was!"

[True, it is not all that unusual to hear
the name of Ozymandias twice in one week
-- and at least twice before on this blog!]
Back in the day, Lockyer (c.1600 – 1672) successfully marketed a miracle pill that apparently cleansed the entire digestive system by causing simultaneous vomiting and diarrhea. Though it sounds exceedingly unpleasant, his product had a huge following during his lifetime; and upon the occasion of his death, he took the opportunity to write as his epitaph one final advertisement for his "Pilulae Radiis Solis Extractae" (extract of sunlight!), more commonly referred to as "Lockyer's Pill":

Here Lockyer: lies interr'd enough: his name
Speakes one hath few competitors in fame:
A name soe Great, soe Generall't may scorne
Inscriptions whch doe vulgar tombs adorne.
A diminution 'tis to write in verse
His eulogies which most men's mouths rehearse.
His virtues & his PILLS are soe well known...
That envy can't confine them under stone.
But they'll survive his dust and not expire
Till all things else at th'universall fire.
This verse is lost, his PILL Embalmes him safe
To future times without an Epitaph

Lockyer thought for sure his pills would outlast his faux sonnet. Ozymandias and Sennacherib envisioned generation after generation surveying their mighty works. Yet in each case, the future went its own way, choosing a different fate for the would - be heroes, leaving behind a "dream . . . gone wrong."

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS ON MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Monday, October 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT ~ Lausanne
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com