Hanging Gardens of Babylon Lament

Fable me this
old Nebuchadnezzar,
were you gripped 
by an unrelenting
heart swell, or
was it the swell
of a man who knows
to please a Queen:
you must grow
a garden in the desert. 

Babylon shrouds
my body in earthquake
rubble, beneath
the dusty dialect
of Berossus
and Siculus
are my tumbled
terraced walls
that kiss the edge
of the Euphrates
with mud brick -
scraping the inside 
of the poet's eye, 
refusing to just die.