White stars stud the indigo

like the dowry on my veil

when my father sent me from Media 
to sign a pact with Babylon.

Neb has been wandering for seven years.

At first our cattle flourished like the shrubs 
that grew from his back. He is blind

now. His groin reflects a fire

in the hills. Starlight leaks
on his upturned face. He bends.

Like cattle the goddess denies

he nuzzles thin grass. A famine 
extends. His dog has left us

and rides him. Neb is claw-footed.

His bare gonads turn to gold. 
A lyre floats in the Tigris, unstrung.

Neb disintegrates. There will be stencils

of ash. Napalm and immolations 
will be the burning bush. Daniel haunts him

and the three men not consumed. The slaves

are restless for their god. Trees will char. 
Their oil catches. Balls of incandescence

burst from the canopy. Neb rolls,

rolls; the world is unmade. 
As a raven watches him, a slave girl

dresses my hair. This is no one’s

Zion, she says. Spines grow 
from his back. White reaches

from his face to the points of his legs –

the strokes of a foreign god
jealous for justice. A dog

(half out of the picture) leads him.

The slaves have been singing
though they said they would not.

The crimson shadow of my king

is a great river. Mountains 
are olive in the divine storm.

A ram’s shadow kisses the bird-clawed

man. He is struck with a vein 
of gold. Blood stains the hills.

As I order my hair dyed black

my lord’s mouth overflows with grass. 
With indigo and henna my girl’s hands

are stained. Cool sherbet melts

on my tongue. The bleached man 
with the cow’s muzzle lies on the earth.

A tree takes root in his navel,

blooms blue. He is clay whitened 
by sun. Nisaba’s scribe, I keep

account of vines. A prophet says

we make the whole earth drunk. 
Arched over his gold, Neb is too ill

to write or read. (His son will forget

the finger of a god.) The sky 
glows pale over the khaki plain.

There are no carcasses beside his.

Beyond the horizon a fire is doused. 
A mushroom cloud is rooted in his belly

where a tree once grew. A comb catches

in my hair. The famine breaks. 
A shoot pushes from his bloat

with four black buds. Ibis

dip toward the two rivers. Eden. 
My dowry cloaks him. Rain drives him

toward my crow-dark hair.

The trees are poised for flight.


Notes:

In response to viewing 9 paintings from Arthur Boyd’s Nebuchadnezzar in the Wilderness series,

The Agony and the Ecstasy Exhibition, NGA Canberra, 2014.