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And the angel slammed him against the wall, hand tight around his throat, twitching with tension, with the snarling, spitting drive, the urge, the
need,
to just crush his larynx, snap his neck.

“Where is he?” it hissed. And then Pechorin was standing beside him. And then the real pain began.

“Dumuzi hid among the grass, among the bushes or among the trees,” he said. “I do not know where.”

The
ugallu
searched among the grass, among the bushes and among the trees but could not find Dumuzi.

He leaned forward in the chair, retching, spitting up blood. Pechorin looked at the lump of rounded, red chambers and tubes held in his hand. His heart.

“You don't really need this, do you? You are one of us, after all, god or monster, angel or demon. Whichever side you choose, you'll always be like us…unkin. What do you need this…flesh for?”

He was empty inside now, hollow. The pain just didn't mean anything anymore. Nothing did.

“The ditches of Arali,” he said, coughing. “He's hiding in the ditches of Arali.”

THE DITCHES OF ARALI, THE TRENCHES OF THE SOMME

The
ugallu
caught Dumuzi in the ditches of Arali. He turned pale, began to cry, cried out:

“My sister saved my life. My friend has brought about my death. If my sister's child goes wandering in the streets, may they be safe; I bless that child. If my friend's child goes wandering in the streets, may they be lost; I curse that child.” And Tammuz cursed, he cursed his friend, and his friend's child and the words hang in the air
now, as embedded in eternity as in the wedge-shaped marks pressed into clay, caught in a moment thick as the smoke of war, the clouds of a storm, and all Seamus can do is stand there listening and looking on in silent sorrow as the other lads drag the poor boy kicking and screaming, and sobbing and cursing, cursing like Seamus has never fookin heard in his life, sure, and they drag him down along the trench, like a fookin animal, dragging his feet through the mud, sure, and they throw him into the dugout and it's Seamus and the lads, his mates who have to do it, have to do it, sure, and they don't want to harm him but they have to hurt him, have to slap some sense into the boy 'cause it's the only way and if he doesn't come out of it, if he doesn't fookin come out of it, he'll end up fookin shot as a fookin coward and Seamus can't let that happen, he can't let that happen, sure, because he'd never forgive himself…so he goes into the dugout with the other lads and they don't listen to poor Tommy's curses.

The
ugallu
surrounded Dumuzi. They bound his hands; they bound his neck. They beat the husband of Inanna. Dumuzi raised his arms up to the skies, to Shamash, God of Justice, and cried out: “O Shamash, my brother-in-law, I am your sister's husband. It was me who brought food to the sacred shrine, who brought the wedding gifts to Uruk. It was me who kissed the holy lips, who danced upon the holy lap, Inanna's lap.

“Make my hands the hands of a gazelle. Make my feet the feet of a gazelle. Let me flee my demons. Let me flee to Kubiresh!”

“Ah, Christ now, Tommy boy, what have ye fookin gone and gotten yourself into? What have ye done?”

The boy looks at Seamus with eyes so hollow, so broken and scared, that it just breaks his fookin heart to see the lad like this, and he grits his teeth and swallows, and wipes his nose, so he does, because if he doesn't do something he's going to fookin fall apart himself, sure. Christ, they'll fookin shoot him, so they will.

“I just went for a walk, Seamus. It was so nice out there, it was so nice, because the sun was shining and the grass was sort of blowing in the wind so soft and gentle, like…and there wasn't any shells, Seamus. There wasn't any shells at all.”

“For fook's sake, Tommy. Talk fookin sense. What are ye talking about? It's been fookin raining fookin shells and mortars and fookin bullets as well as fookin cats and dogs.”

“It wasn't raining, not out in the fields. But there was a river, see, and I couldn't get across the river, so I had to come back. To…to get something…so I could get across. You could come with me, Seamus. You can open the door and let me out and you can come with me and we can cross the river and we can…”

Seamus looks out the door of the fookin dugout where he's standing with his fookin gun, just fookin waiting for the word to get back to the officers that the boy's still fookin doolally. Sure and it's officers who get shell shock and the rest of them are just fookin cowards to shoot.

“I don't know, Tommy boy,” he says, “I don't know if I can go with ye where ye're going, lad.”

Shamash took mercy on Dumuzi's tears. He made his hands the hands ofa gazelle. He made his feet the feet of a gazelle. Dumuzi fled his demons, fled to Kubiresh.

Dumuzi, the
dumu-zi,
shining child, escaped. Tammuz escaped. From that ancient Sumerian text,
Dumuzi's Dream,
he leaps, from myth to myth, only to be captured again, in
The Most Bitter Cry,
captured and chained, to wake under the rising sun that tries, time and again, to save him. He wakes from his dreams, naked and wounded, and in this version of the tale or that a prisoner of militia, a deserter or a fugitive conscript, being taken back to face punishment. He breaks free and runs, into fields that go on forever, trying to escape, from death, from war, from myth into reality or from reality into myth.

DUMUZI'S CAPTURE

“Let us go to Kubiresh,” said the
ugallu.
And they walked the road of all dust till they arrived in Kubiresh. But Dumuzi fled his demons, he fled across the fields of illusion to the house of Old Belili. He crept into Old Belili's house and spoke to her.

“Old woman. I am no mere mortal man. I am the husband of a goddess, of Inanna. Would you pour water for me to drink? Would you sprinkle flour for me to eat?”

He ransacks the shelves and the cupboards of the farmhouse, looking for something to eat, he does, because he's starving and he's so tired of running, so cold and wet and tired that he's no longer sure what it is he's running from, his clothes so filthy that when he strips them off to lay them by the fireside to dry, he looks at them and doesn't recognize them as an army tunic or an afghan coat or the rags of a runaway slave or anything but clothes. He puts the dusty black-and-white photograph of the old woman back on the mantelpiece but then there's another shell blast and it falls and smashes on the ground, and he instinctively drops into a huddle. He can hear the beating of their baseball bats and the beating of their wings as he crouches down and eats the beans out of the metal pot with his fingers.

“Let us go to Old Belili,” said the
ugallu.
And they walked the fields of illusion till they arrived at the house of Old Belili. After the old woman had poured water and sprinkled flour for Dumuzi, she left the house. The
ugallu
watched her leave and entered. But Dumuzi fled his demons, and he fled across the fields of illusion to the sheepfold of his sister, Geshtinanna.

Geshtinanna found Dumuzi in the sheepfold, and she sobbed. She raised her mouth up to the sky. She lowered it down to the earth. Her sorrow cloaked the world to its horizon, like a rag of soiled sackcloth. She tore at her eyes, her mouth, her thighs.

And the door is crashing open and he's leaping out through a window shattered by months of mortars, back into the churned-up horror of no-man's-land in France and running through the mud and rain of the mountain storm in North Carolina, and falling over a split-rail fence in the Wyoming snow and trying to drag himself to his feet, but they're vaulting the fence of the sheepfold, coming after him, always after him, with baseball bats and rifle butts and ancient maces raised, and he's holding his sister as she sobs for him.

And the angels come down from the sky on wings, imperial eagles, hawks of war.

A War of Ideals

Asheville, July 13th, 2017.

Thomas watches the door of the bar swing shut behind Finnan and turns his attention back to the blond frat boy at the table across the bar. He's gone quiet now, like something is working its way through his unconscious, trying to crawl up into his mind so that all he can do is try not to think about it. Christ, thinks Thomas, it's fucking 2017 and it may be this isn't the most forward-thinking area of the world, but get a grip. There's more important things in the world than who or what you want to fuck. But the poor sweet angel-eyed lion just drinks his beer and glances at Thomas now and again, and burns with blushing shame as he looks away again, stuck in the story he tells himself of who he is, who he should be.

Still, there's something about him, an air of dreamy distance, that hints at possibility. He could be a junky punk in leather jeans and ripped tee or an English aristo in tails and a straw boater and he'd still fit the bill. There's this blank grace about him, like wherever he is it doesn't really matter because he's not really there.

Thomas is just about to give up when five of the frat boys stand up, pulling their jackets from the backs of the chairs, slinging them over shoulders or folding them over their arms. They sway a little, drunken and still loud as they talk about the party later on tonight and slap the other two on the back, head for the door. From snatched phrases and mumbled admirations, Thomas gathers that a couple of them have dropped out of college to sign up with the armed forces. America is in danger, after all, and the freedom and democracy of puppet-states all over the Middle East and North Africa are at stake. The tenuous order of the world needs to be maintained.

On a small TV set tucked snug in a corner up behind the bar, CNN is showing another broadcast of the infamous Amar al Ahmadi Malik, another video diatribe, scrolling text translating his claims of responsibility for this atrocity or that. He's emerging as the great villain now, since Alhazred's assassination and, even with the sound muted, Thomas can hear the resonance of the Cant under his angry tones. Malik in Syria, al Mashaikh in North Iraq, Khalifa in Iran—Thomas doesn't know if they're really all linked in this “network of terror” but he does know one thing. They're all unkin.