I came across the work of Nan Cohen in Plougshares magazine, and loved these two. Like most folks in our theological tradition, the story of Abraham and Isaac evokes in me wonder, awe, dread, bewilderment, and, in the end, humility. These two short poems are very fine.
Abraham and Isaac: I
He took him outside and said, “Look toward heaven
and count the stars, if you are able to count them.”
And He added, “So shall your offspring be.”
I have lived in tents and know how faint a trace
we leave behind us on the earth;
how, when the body fails, the soul folds
its light clothes and steals away
But now a child sleeps in my tent;
I would raise a tower of stone to shield his head,
and yet the thought that any common stone
must outlast him provokes such rage in me
I wake all night, alarmed and furious,
seeing nothing in the dark but dark.
Abraham and Isaac: II
And Abraham picked up the knife to slay his son
I have lived in tents and often, at midday,
have I parted the tent-clothes and gone inside
with the light of day so blinding my eyes
that my wife spoke to me out of darkness,
saying, Take this dish, and eat
I have walked among the flocks on starless nights
with the blackness so filling my eyes
I put forth my hand,
as if the night were a tent,
as if some shape might glimmer in my sight
before the cloths of night fell across it.
Eyes full of light or dark,
night or day, I cannot tell.
I grope forward to lift the cloth
of this moment, and the next.
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