Anna Crowe
A Shepherd's Voice
Language: english
Translations:
german (Stimme eines Schäfers), catalan (Una veu de pastor)
A Shepherd's Voice
(after 2 pictographic clay tablets from Tell Brak, Syria, c. 4000 BCE)
The river the clay was dug from
has vanished, so we must imagine
ducks squabbling
among the rushes, the flight
of cranes at sunset, night
erupting with bull-frog cries.
What's scratched into the clay
is a voice, a shepherd's, who declares
– Here are 10 goats
– Here are 10 sheep
His dry receipts remain
to tell us that barren desert
was pasture, watered, green;
and though his flocks have shrunk
to two baked bits of clay,
what's scratched there is
the shepherd's voice, calling
his beasts into our field of vision –
some lop-eared with rough brown coats,
others whose big horns coil like rope:
– Here are 10 goats
– Here are 10 sheep
coming to drink, bells clunking, sending up
bird-cries; the reeds confer, the water laps.
