A din Akkadian seeps in my room,
(But Sumer songs still echo in my heart)
Barbaric babble, never to depart
From timeless Sumer, sinking to its doom;
While I, too weak to walk, obscured in gloom,
Await my restful ending, soon to start,
A carcass strewn with flowers on a cart,
And pulled by donkeys clopping to the tomb.
And yet Inanna hears me. Her embrace
Re-kneads, rejuvenates my stiffened clay,
And she herself will press the fresh-cut cane
And write her name cuneiform, and grace
My songs with lyres plucked and struck to play.
My poems live in clay; they will remain.
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