Gill Barr

Hostilities Between Lagash and Umma (2600-2350 BCE)

Opinion varies as to how or why the conflict started.                                                    

They were probably competing for the same resources,                                    

until an agreement was reached, advanced for the day,                                             

marked by a large stone (or stele) with writing on it.                                                

They were probably competing for the same resources,                                  

then violent skirmishes broke out at the boundary,                                                       

marked by a large stone (or stele) with writing on it.                                        

Sometimes both sides came together for the common good,                                          

then violent skirmishes broke out at the boundary,

stories inflamed, cities were burnt, and temples plundered.                                               

Sometimes both sides came together for the common good,

replacing the stele that had been smashed to pieces or carried away.                                           

Stories inflamed, cities were burnt, and temples plundered,                                               

until an agreement was reached, advanced for the day,                                              

replacing the stele that had been smashed to pieces or carried away.                                            

Opinions vary as to how or why the conflict started.                                                     


Delay

Did you spot those cables

shelved at the side of the tunnel entrance

when we were on that train near Euston?

They were carefully layered,

the way my mother might have laid out 

laundered sheets in the hot-press. I meant to say.

Inside those grimy-coated cables lies the charge 

of the closed circuit, the healthy mix of protons 

creating electricity so effectively 

that humans have extended days,

subdued the night,

domesticated it, so that with the flick 

of a switch or verbal command 

the world lights up, powers on. 

Everything is energised: our laptops, the oven 

with our over-cooked meal, the robotic 

lawnmower we saw heady as a deranged puppy 

at Riverstown on Thursday,

even your delayed train – eventually.

I don’t know why I wish I’d said something that day 

about the assemblage of dirty cables 

or at least expressed my short-lived awe 

at the conclave of high-viz engineers crouched down 

staring at a million wires in the opened box. 

I remember thinking of my grandmother 

speaking of her experience from gaslight 

to a bright world I too often take for granted

for, as you know, there are days when I prefer 

the dark to see the stars and search out the moon’s dust. 

Just now I imagine our little signals encased 

in myelinated sheaths, laid down 

along myriad dark tunnels of ourselves, 

tiny charges leaping 

across synapses 

firing in marvellous chemical exchange 

towards each other.


Gill Barr’s poems have appeared in a range of UK publications such as: Bad Lilies, New Humanist, The New European, Honest Ulsterman, Atrium and Riptide’s Climate Change Matters Anthology. Gill appeared at the Ledbury Poetry Festival in 2022 (Event 68). She holds an MA in Creative Writing from Queen’s University Belfast. She lives as she always has in perpetual flux between Dorset and Derry/Londonderry, where she was born and raised.