Then I fell upon the city of Makris with my army behind me, and I made its men cry out in fear at the sight of my splendor in the aspect of Hasht, in the triple aspect of Nummis. Their arrows I spurned and their spears I struck aside, and the soldiers of Erem-eser king of Makris became as rubble before me. Then I made Erem-eser and all who heard his voice submit to my feet, and I imposed upon them tribute…
So Nadine reads for the hundredth time,
slouched at her tippy table—the piece of cardboard
meant to be under the short leg is gone again.
The text is called the Boast of Gurna-bodriar III,
the Warrior King, circa 1300 B.C.E.,
who made modest Nab a respectable kingdom.
He vanquished neighboring Makris. He ground
the city of Mishgath-Tera between his palms.
He received fine gifts of placatory friendship
from Adad-nirari I of Assyria,
Kadashman-Turgu the Kassite king,
and the grand vizier of Elam: gold and silver,
of course, dyed wool, elephant hides and concubines,
camels, chairs inlaid with ivory, et cetera,
et cetera, except—
here’s this wretched, obscure but not unavailable
translation from the Megiddo ivories
(done before she was born, and stored
in a few libraries all this time),
suggesting that the so-called Warrior King,
at the time of his supposed conquests, was eight years old,
the regency held by his mother. Poor Makris
may have been bludgeoned only by diplomats.
Nadine hears her thesis crumbling instead.
The evidence from Megiddo might be misleading;
the evidence from the sites so far
could support either version. But if we’re not sure,
not even sure we can ever be sure,
just like her physicist brother, flopping
through trapdoors into philosophy,
why inch along nearsighted on our knees
from question to question?
The minutes that follow weigh on her like stones.
So that’s one reason: to make these stones move on greased rollers
into a pile, sometimes even
a lasting one with a point. At least
to get them off your chest. Somehow,
between one and the next, still facing
her stupid, historically insignificant,
cheap, much-used wooden table,
she releases a long-held image of herself
raising up some broken thing, saying,
“O undone fragments, I shall make you whole.”
But what about this regent queen?
If someone else was winning battles for Nab,
how inconvenient for her to give him the credit.
Nadine peels apart her jaw and cupped hand.
Papers stir with her long exhalation.
O messy fragments, here am I.
And here is Gurna-bodriar,
what’s left of him, boy or braggart or both.
She leans on the table, feels its familiar lurch.
It may be an artifact of atomic particles
that are themselves almost entirely empty space,
bombarded by the conditions of quantum physics,
but so far she feels sure her elbows can count on it,
even when she’s not looking,
to act like a table. A gimpy table.
She picks up a pencil of emptiness in fingers full of space,
and begins to leave on the Boast a new graphite trail.