In the Beginning ©
Dan Lukiv, M.Ed.
English and Creative Writing
McNaughton Centre, Quesnel, BC, Canada
E-mail: lukivdan@shaw.ca
1.
O luminaries of
Night and day
And seeds of dry land,
Awake to the breath
Of lungs and love.
2.
O gold and gum
And stone, and spray
So rainless, so warm
For bone and flesh.
3.
O image—
Is it really true
That you felt naked,
That you won’t die,
That cherubs block
Your way with
Blades of fire?
4.
O thistles and thorns
And blood mixed with earth,
Where is your glory,
Where is your hearth?
5.
The Nephilim are coming!
The Nephilim are coming!—
Through loins of flesh and spirit
And depravity.
6.
First clubs and knives and gnashing,
Then water swirling and chewing,
Filled all things to the brim,
Even to overflow in echoes
Of legends, from one antipode
To its next, of unfaithful sons
And angry demi-gods—
Hercules, is this where you began?
7.
O Noah between
Tarred walls that groaned,
How many times did you
Thank Jehovah that you
Chopped and sawed
“Just so”?
8.
These inclinations
In the limbs of youth—
Unlike restful odours
That aspire.
9.
In the rainbow
Glows a covenant,
In the hand of Canaan
Burns a curse.
10.
Nimrod Somebody
Faced his God and spat
While his straight arrows
Felled arms and legs of his
Very own.
11.
Vanity,
With its belly in the grave,
Soars with birds,
Climbs higher than thoughts,
Even prayers.
Should they have called that
Ziggurat Eve?
12.
You left the gold and silver
And lapis lazuli,
The fine kings buried with their
Fine executed servants,
The 14-room homes and
Paved courtyards and
Wedge-shaped letters and
Square and cube roots—
You left it all to live with scorpions
And snakes and jackals,
And your wife left the bricks and
Plaster and whitewash to go
Right along with you
In tents.
Both of you: aliens, un-rooted,
Un-fallen.
13.
Lot, in the garden of waters,
Before your daughters violated you
Through wine in that cave of secrecy,
Why did you choose to dwell in a
Green land of sodomy?
14.
O king-priest,
Rare among men and angels,
How you blessed the lesser,
Not just this son of Terah,
But even the priests yet in his stock,
In his bones—and how you
Blessed the boy who would
Slay the giant.
15.
In this darkness of sleep,
Children like stars
Juggle hope and pain
And thorns of time.
16.
O zebra man,
Wild in stance,
An archer in defiance
You shall prove to be—
A tent dweller,
Fierce, a warlord,
A patriarch of angry children,
A hater of the seed
That will save mankind.
17.
Upon your face,
You fell, old man,
And laughed into
The ear of God,
And then you cut off
Foreskins with the sharp
Knife of obedience.
18.
Oak trees? Were these oak trees,
That Constantine would glorify
Alongside his basilica,
That could not defy the wind
Or seasons,
Or incarnate three,
Or fires of Sodom that would
Smoke before
Abraham’s eyes
And his wife who denied
She’d laughed?
19.
This billowing ash,
This kiln-baked land,
This absence of longing
That clamoured at
Lot’s door:
The wind becomes
The grave.
20.
The womb of your wife,
Your slave girls too,
Locked,
Like a door,
Like a treasure chest,
Like a tomb.
Where is the key?
Where is your scepter?
Have your arms
Grown short?
21.
Wrinkled and grey,
She weans her 5-year-old boy:
Who will laugh at them?
Not the wind in the
Tamarisk tree.
22.
In a thicket,
A horned ram,
On the altar,
Wood;
An able man,
Willing to die;
In Abraham’s hand,
A knife—
Some stories
Repeat themselves.
23.
Sarah, a princess,
A plucked flower,
Buried in that cave
In that field,
Disappearing into the bellies
Of smaller creatures,
Worms and insects,
Yet whole in a greater tomb,
In Jehovah’s un-walled memory,
And yet growing, growing,
As nations and kings,
In the steps of Isaac who grieves,
And grieves.
24.
Grandniece of Abraham,
Damsel of Nahor—
How she poured and poured
Water from her jar into the trough
And how she poured and poured
Herself into the heart of the man
In wonder,
In silence,
Amidst guzzling camels
And buzzing flies
And her own grace that men
Still marvel at.
25.
Give me the stew!
The red!
Give it to me now!—
Or I shall surely die!
And he paid dearly,
As people always do,
For such a warm belly,
With treasures that dwarf
All the gold of
Kings and queens
And thieves.
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