In the Beginning ©*

Dan Lukiv, M.Ed.
English and Creative Writing
McNaughton Centre, Quesnel, BC, Canada
E-mail: lukivdan@shaw.ca

Previous Verses

26.
Men from Crete
Stop up wells
That Abraham dug,
Forging unfriendships
With prophets
Yet unborn.

27.
You say nothing of
Cain’s rage in Esau
The hairy one.

But Isaac will see your
Bitterness of spirit,
Even the faces of Judith and
Basemath in your
Distressed eyes,

And he surely will
Send away Jacob, who
Seized his brother’s heel,
But not his right hand.

28.
Your marriages clothed
In the Hittite curse
Become songs in the groans
Of your mother and father.

And so you choose Mahalath,
Daughter of Ishmael the archer,
Who scorned Isaac,
To make things better.

29.
Was your name really Cow,
Or Wild Cow?
Did your lacklustre eyes
Secretly burn with the lone desire
To be one man’s fruit
Between his moist lips?

To be the ruse,
The unwanted,
The one loved less!

How jealously would gnash
Before your sister’s beauty
And your many sons.

How the struggle
Your father brewed
Would end in the cool earth
Of Machpelah.

30.
Potato herb—
egg shaped.
Blood-green leaves
Circle the taproot
That forks like
A man’s limbs
And lineage.

From the fan’s eye,
Purple or white or blue
Flowers release plums
Of yellow-red that fill
Nostrils with sweet
Apples and dreams.

Unlock the womb!
Rain upon
The parched earth!

Mandrakes,
Ripe alongside wheat:
From Reuben’s hand
To Rachel’s belly—
Finally she gave birth

Years later.

31.
Laban, whose face had changed
Into another man’s face,
Or more into his own,
Wandered out of these pages,
And back to his life
On his side of The Watchtower,
Without his teraphim,
But with a pledge that Jacob,
Such a fierce man of war,
Would not reappear,
Like a lion in the night,
Looking for stolen wages.

32.
Neither was his forehead copper
Nor his neck iron sinew,
But his socket joint
Took a turn for the worse,
With all that grappling that
Turned him into limping Israel
With eleven sons.

The nameless angel left him
Crooked, but not taller
Than he needed to be.

33.
Over 1000 years before
Mountain-lurking sons
Will gleefully hand over
Fleeing Jews,
Brethren Jews, to
Nebuchadnezzar’s drenched
Sword,
You, O mighty chieftain,
Commander of many,
Run to embrace your brother—

How you, Red,
Cry and kiss and
Reluctantly accept Jacob’s
Goats and sheep
And camels.

34.
Honourable Shechem
Raped Dinah. Her brothers
Killed him, slaughtered
All the men, in fact, as they
Ached privately,
Inheriting sheep, herds,
Asses, children, women.

Jacob became “a stench”
In this land,
But his boys were pleased that
They had fixed things.

35.
Shrewd Rachel
Died alongside Jacob,
Years after tricking her father
Out of his teraphim.

“The customary thing with women
Is upon me,” she’d said,
Clever girl.

How Jacob loved her!
How she’d longed for sons!

The delivery broke Rachel,
But her midwife said,
“Do not be afraid, for you will
Have this son also.”

Her strength drained
From her hips,
And after she named her child
Ben-oni,
She died.

36.
Your desire to live in high places
Released you from your confounded
Birthright. Finally you could live
Above it all, in the fine caves and on the
Great plateaus in the sky. Finally your kings
Would dream amongst clouds, and gloat over
Your copper, iron, vineyards and wells.

Finally you would set the example
For your brother, who would also dig
Into the cool earth for a king.

Yes, one day he would be like you,
Finally, a man of flesh and blood,
A mirror for all great nations.

37.
Goat blood,
Liver-coloured upon
The striped shirt of
Joseph in Ishmael’s
Hand—

“It is my son’s long garment!
A vicious wild beast must have
Devoured him!”

Grieving Jacob invites
Himself into the grave,
While shirtless Joseph
Steps into a strange
Sunrise.

38.
You, a flower in time’s
Bouquet—see your sisters,
Ruth the Moabite
And Rahab the harlot—
But you cannot see Er,
Condemned by Jehovah
To a throne of dishonour.

Onan abused you,
Then withdrew himself,
Sharing neither seed
Nor family wealth.

You painted Judah’s face
With stripes of hypocrisy,

And your son Perez
Shares your honour alongside
Your sisters, in the chief
Lineage of time.

39.
Without tablets of stone
Or bulky scrolls
To direct his hand and mouth
And eye,
He ran from his master’s wife
Like birds that fly from
Hillside flames.

Instead of the smooth milk
Of her lips,
He drank her wrath,
Hot enough to condemn him
To the prison hole
Where he became
A king.

40.
At this birthday feast,
This day of Pharaoh’s splendour
And fisted power,
The chief baker lost his head.

Pharaoh had it removed,
And hung him upon a stake,
For all the fowls to eat.

He was not a great man,
Except in the kitchen.

He had not been able to
Interpret his own dream of
Baskets, bread, and birds,
But at least he died quickly.

41.
Ugly cows,
Thin-fleshed,
Ate up fat cows,
Beautiful;

“Thin ears of grain,”
Wind-scorched,
Ate up fat ears,
Full—

These dreams of Pharaoh,
Interpreted by neither idols
Nor magic-practising priests
Nor wise men,
Found their symbols undressed
By the master of the waterpit
And prison hole.

This prophet beneath
Egypt’s sword—his palms spread
Across the desert,
Across the whole earth.

42.
Once upon dreams,
Those other sheaves
Bowed down to his,

And then heavenly bodies
Bowed down to him,
An unrecognized son
In Canaanite soil.

And now his brothers
Step outside dreams
And into his unEgyptian heart,
And still unrecognize him.

43.
How your children will
One day tear like the wolf
And sling stones with
Death’s fire.

Who could know that as you
Chew utter amazement
And portions five times
What you need?

And yet there you are,
Feeding Israel’s first king
And left-handed Ehud
The executioner.

You breathe and chew
And wonder, so unaware
That you’re an artery
Flowing from Egypt to
Days before the
Waterpit.

There is so much you don’t know
As you chew wide-eyed
Alongside your wide-eyed
Brothers.

44.
Do you carry the
Murdered faces of Shechem
On your back?
Does Joseph’s great hole
In your father’s life
Bow down your spine?
And Tamar—does her
Dishonour make your
Hips ache?

Does offering your freedom
To save your youngest brother
Allow you to stand up straighter?

45.
Joseph does not return
To boyhood landscapes
That shrink with time,
Or to neighbours who’ve
Grown shorter,
Or to tents much smaller
Than they must have been.

Crags that mark
The breadth of space would
Surely draw closer together and
Reduce in size,
If he were to revisit them,

And yet
Memories of boyhood roll
Beyond the usual walls,
Chasing faces of his mother,
His blossom mother;
His father the patriarch,
Keeper of promises that history
Will sing about;
His uncle Esau, the man who liked red;
And places that only boys can find
Between the bushes and trees
And caves.

Joseph is not going home,
But the face of his father,
Lined with all the wrinkles
That time and space have kept
Him from,
Will come to him,
To share newfound peace
And the agony of
Lost decades.

46.
The hand the person,
Or his special lean
Or running feet,
Or accountability—

Hands filled with sacrifices,
Restful odours—

Hands uplifted,
Folded in poverty,
Withdrawn and closed,
Open, generous,
Wrinkled, smooth,
Clean, soiled with
Bad deeds,
Cupped to hold
Cool water—

Reuben’s hand blocked.
No wonder.

“And Joseph will lay
His hand upon [Jacob’s]
Eyes.”

47.
O Goshen, land of
Bleating sheep
Alongside the great Nile
That one day will
Stink of blood—

You will stand up like a wall
Against gadflies and boils
And worse things like darkness
And humiliated gods.

One day,
Jacob,
Even all of Jacob,
Will have to leave
This place.

48.
His eyes are not so muddy,
Nor his bones so dry,
Nor his flesh so limp—

This prophet
Dim in his own light,
This patriarch yet
Filling the future
With his own breath,
Will not bless
The wrong boy.

49.
Milk-white teeth
And wine-red eyes:
This lion cub,
This keeper of the
Scepter and commander’s
Staff,
This man with clothes soaked
In grape blood,
Stretches out like a lion—
Fearless,
Lauded by his brothers,
Filling his enemies with
The sharp edge of dread.

Until Shiloh comes,
This is Judah,
The keeper of
Obedience.

50.
Jacob oiled
And spiced,
Carried, amidst men
Bald, others bearded,
From dry Egypt to
That moist cave of
Machpelah, where his
Beloved wife would
Never lie.

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