In the early hours I unlid my eyes
and slide the sun and the moon into their places;
by the oscillation of my pupils
I wind up birds in the garden,
making them flap their wings and sing;
by the breath in my lungs
I pump a cool gust over my Babylon;
by my aroused virility
I erect a throbbing ziggurat
that mindlessly probes the manifold air;
the pulsation of my awakening heart
populates my Babylon with shouting people
stirs up commotion at market-squares
and fills millions of baskets with clotted light;
by my cough, to clear my throat,
I send out an army of mercenaries
with plume-crowned horses, swanlike chariots
and pompous generals, to conquer more land;
by the pain I feel remembering my woman
I create all the love-stories in my Babylon:
the wretched lovers separated by their families,
and the happy ones, ever reliving their first days;
by my fantasies I permeate my Babylon
with mythologies and syncretic beasts
who climb up Ishtar's gates towards heaven
and lick the sun with their forked tongues.
By the time I get up, my Babylon is essentially complete,
all that it needs is a sense of mortality. There must be a limit
even to my Babylon, for limitless life is the same
as death, so I close my eyelids from time to time
and cast brief nights over hot rooftops and lion-faced ledges:
it is not really death, but it is the best I can manage.
