It is curious that one of the last places where you can read something in peace, today, is the cabin of a plane. There, you can find the necessary concentration to absorb the voice of the people of the past, of the poetry of long ago, today hopelessly swamped in a phantasmagoria of noise and color, full of sound and fury. It is often a faint voice, remote from our everyday experience. But if we pay enough attention, we can still hear it,
So, in a recent travel I brought with me the book by Betty De Shong Meador, "Lady of Largest Heart." It collects three hymns to Inanna written by the Sumerian priestess Enheduanna, the first named author in history. She who wrote during the third millennium before our era; more than four thousand years ago.
If you think about it, it is a great privilege to be able to read such a book while looking at the clouds from above, in the moonlight, high in the sky, where Enheduanna could only imagine her beloved goddess Inanna flying.
and I ride out
team of six in harness
pulled over sky roads
to the bounds of heaven
I come forth a queen
like cool moonlight down the breast of the sky
From "The First Poem, Inanna and Ebih", in "Lady of Largest Heart" by Betty De Shong Meador
