Zeugma

          Zeugma.  From the Greek, zeugnynai, to join together; from
                     a pair of animals linked at labor;
          yoked oxen.  The Greeks, of course, for whom beginnings signified
                     better than endings, alpha & omega, for whom
          x was just another letter: xiphoid, xerophagy, xenophobia, xoanon.
                     Civilization, perforce, is abecedarian.
          When Xenophonís hoplites charged the Persians at Cunaxa he
                     denied the agency of local gods, mistaking
          vox populi for vox angelica, voice of a suffering populace
                     entirely freed of fleshly yoke,
          uplifted in exquisite agony.  Such are the costs of our transmigration.
                     Fish demand ladders, wooden horses
          transhumance, referring to reindeer but apropos in Ilium,
                     green-fingered Lydia or Mesopotamia, 
          scene of the tidal clash of cultures & languages, ebbs & floods 
                     hardly unique to Persians & Greeks.
          Recall the illiterate Pizarro against the hummingbird-feathered
                     Inca Atahualpa, sun-god & moon-
          queen trampled into celestial dust by a few dozen Spaniards
                     jointly with their horses, gunpowder, &
          priestly blessing to sanctify such slaughter in the name of the king of
                     kings. Back to Xenophon & the Ten Thousand:
          on the retreat now, following the Tigris, they come to a ruined city,
                     Larissa, inhabited by Medes, thought to be 
          none other than Nimrud, ancient Kalhu, hippogriffs become
                     Medean in the wake of serial conquest,
          median point on their march from Babylon toward the hills of Armenia,
                     none cheered by that barren vision, dire
          Larissa, omen of defeat, citadel of political impermanence.
                     On the next day, great Nineveh, abandoned:
          kings, senechals, satraps, seraphs, jesters, fletchers, peltasts, potters,
                     priestly & noble classes--vanished con-
          jointly into equitable oblivion, weaver & wool, smith & tool,
                     queen & fool.  So much for the Assyrians.
          Ink, a luxury, so no texts but wind-scoured stone remain to help us
                     recall them, our contemporary ignorance
          hardly less monumental than Xenophonís self-serving chronicle,
                     scene by scene inventing ancient history.
          Green no longer, that Fertile Crescent, mislabelled by an en-
                     -tranced human stab at metaphoric order.
          Fish into amphibians, logograms into syllabaries, seas into lands
                     uplifted in autochthonic agons
          entirely unwitnessed, template free of cartographic correlatives,
                     vox barbara or vox nihilim, celestial music
          denied in our fury to claim an alphabet forged from the metals of chaos.
                     When the ox moves, the plow moves.
          Civilization, perforce, is boustrophedonic: x-y-z; z-y-
                     x. Better the blue mud of the Euphrates,
          better the raw ore of belief than these chains of syntax, this
                     yoke of definitions.  Xoanon:
          a primitive idol resembling the rough block from which it was carved.
                     Zeugma: maker & vessel, master & slave.