Just Because: 'For the Scribe Gar.Una of Uruk, 3,000 B.C.'

It's been a while since I posted a poem, but when I read this one, courtesy of Poem-A-Day, I knew I had to share it. It's by David Wojahn, who said about it, "This poem is partly an ode to the Sumerian scribe in the title, and also an elegy, occasioned by encountering margin notes in a book—written by a departed loved one. 'Boustrophedon' is defined in Webster's as 'the writing of alternate lines in opposite directions (as from left to right and from right to left)' ":

For the Scribe Gar.Una of Uruk, 3,000 B.C.

 —author of the earliest known signature

That arrow & life were homonyms. That his name
   Predates all others, incised sunbaked on a slab
      of Euphratian clay. Stylus a broken reed, though it

Carries somehow the bedazzled opalescent mojo
   Of transfiguration. The hand which holds it edges right
      & reaching the margin circles back, right to left

& east to west, boustrophedon, so that inscription
   is a form of weaving. What matters that the context
      Is grain, is cattle & goat, chamber pot & sandal,

Three & twenty spear-shafts hewn of cedar,
   Flagons of unguents for the Temple Stores
      Enumerate, enumerate. Life & arrow,

Our endless numbered days enfeathered
   So to fly relentless in unpitying sun.
      The one whom I loved is dead. The one


Whom I loved is clay. Enumerate, enumerate
   Life & arrow. They are all gone now, the days
      We shared. Gone eighteen years, six months,

Seven days, eleven hours. & thus I open
   The Major English Romantic Poets & keep vigil,
      For her hand, her hand lives on in concord

Peerless with William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell
   Decoded. So he took me thro' a stable
      (vision of materialism) and thro' a church and down

Into a church vault, at the end of which (Mill of Abstraction)
   we did come to a cave; down the winding cavern
      we groped our tedious way (Materialism = Locke

+ Newton). ... I have also the Bible of Hell, which
   the world shall have, whether they will or no. (Creation +
      Fall—the Angel embraces the Fire).

Blue ink, green ink, pencil. Kentish town, the '80s,
   Window open & the pewter light ensilvering
      The Heath. I watch the book upon her desk, pages

A-tremble in the evening wind. She is out somewhere
   In the leather jacket; she is out somewhere
      To score. Blue ink, green ink, the Angel

Embraces fire. Guide my hand now, o scribe,
   Let me speak of her as though she might stand
      Before me still. Enumerate, enumerate—

 The fog transfiguring, the chastening light. Guide my hand,
   O scribe, so that I might see her from this window
      We have hewn of stylus, of keyboard & character.

Guide my hand so that she may walk below, emerging
   Corporeal, parting the Tube Station crowd,
      Jacket, worn boots, her scarf that is forged

Of electrum, her scarf that is molten, her scarf
   That is flame. Before me she stands. Arrow
      & life. Guide my hand, o scribe.

Instruct me to affix her here, that she may,
   For a moment, raise her head toward me,
      So that in this bless'ed gesture I may linger.