“The Boys of Sumer” (from the Akkadian)

One of the earliest surviving laments in world literature, “The Boys of Sumer” remains an outlier of the genre. Few other poems from the Babylonian corpus include so much: aspects of contemporary life, magic, dreams, among the earliest recorded use of colorful insults, and unrequited love. There is also some indication that this poem would have been sung.

Nobody on the road,
cuz roads ain’t been invented yet.
I feel it in the air,
Babylon stinkin like a bitch.
Inundated river, empty streets,
the sun goes down alone.
I'm walkin' by your mud-brick house
though you’re probably at the ziggurat.

I can see you
your brown skin shinin' in the sun
you got your hair combed back,
bright like Shamash, baby.
And I can tell you
my love for you will still be strong
after the boys of Sumer have gone.

I never will forget those nights,
I wonder if it was a dream,
(I should consult a dream interpreter
and learn some magic spells
to keep dogs from attacking me.)
Remember how you made me crazy?
Remember how I made you scream?
Now I don't understand what happened to our love—
oh wait, it was those dipshits from Sumer,
but baby I’m gonna get you back.

I can see you,
your brown skin shinin' in the sun,
I see you walkin' like Ishtar, slow,
and you're smilin' at
all those artisans and craft specialists
who are inventing technology and architecture,
and I’m just a poor guy from the marshes.
But I can tell you
my love for you will still be strong,
after the boys of Sumer have gone

Out in the city today, I saw a Marduk sticker on a newly-made wheeled vehicle,
a little voice inside my head said, "Nothing associated with Sumer rhymes with ‘vehicle.’"
I thought I knew what love caused by magic spells was,
what did I know?
That magician took my money
and my only chicken
and you’re still running around with dickhead Sumerians.

I can see you,
your brown skin shinin' in the sun,
you got your veil pulled down
and you're humming some hymns to Enlil, baby,
and I can tell you
my love for you will still be strong
after the boys of Sumer have gone,
the fucksticks.

I can see you,
your brown skin shinin' in the sun,
your anointed hair slicked back
singing about Gilgamesh, baby.
I can tell you my love
for you will still be strong
after the boys of Sumer have gone.

“The Boys of Sumer,” tr. from the Akkadian by Sherman Sally Brooks. Dates to c. 1500 BC, it can be found, with variant readings, in Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature, ed. Benjamin R. Foster