My brother Enki
sits on the threshold,
watching the sun's beak
dig into his buckwheat porridge,

watching nebulous horses
lose their shape and dissolve,
and dark-red partridges
struggle in the sundown net,
and the crane of our well
nod as if alive.

On the day of Enki's burial
Shamash's boat,
carrying the dead,
collided with a falling star
and fell on the ground.

The dead got out
and, not knowing any more
what to do, scurried home.

My brother Enki should be by now
a general leading Babylonian armies,
or a wide-armed demon descending low
into the ground, to bring out treasures,
or a servant of gods, cleaning with a blue brush
their crowns and plumes.

I can see his next existence
unfold before me with the lush
persistence of something
never begun,

as the night's turquoise wing
twists into the setting sun.