Of Abraham
Early the next morning Abraham went to the place
where he had stood in the Lord’s presence.
As he looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah
and the whole
region of the Plain, he saw dense smoke
over the land rising like fumes from a
furnace."
Genesis 19:27-28
Billowing, black clouds storming up before
His face immobile, lined deeply with age;
His eyes, focused, unblinking, as the clouds
Surged up forlornly, darkly, endlessly,
Masking the destruction, the devastation,
The burning of the peoples, dead within.
What brought forth this conflagration of death?
What had they done, those consumed in the maw
Of sulphurous fire? Abraham stood there,
A witness of their holocaust . . . of love,
Of love so destructive and pitching hot
With lust and mad, groping desires, it burned
To mock its divine nature and did so,
Again and again and again and . . . and
It stopped, fulfilled in this funeral smoke.
“I will follow the Lord,” he thought, aware
Of how no single promise, no bright hope,
Not a single word had yet been fulfilled
Until now, until this – this that he had
Pleaded against, unable to fathom
How the Lord could will innocents to die.
He turned away from the dark, billowing
Smoke, aware how the Sodomites had willed
The death of their own innocents, again
And again and again, reaching unto
Blindness to their devastation of life,
To their own flesh and blood, their own children,
Again and again and again in forceful, joyless
Struggles against nature’s manifest way.
Abraham held a stout staff to help him
Walk among the stones, on the stony way,
A path that would lead him back to his camp,
To Sarah and to the unknown. He thought
Of when he had last visited with Lot,
How the Sodomites had all abandoned
Any regard of respect yet swaggered
In the arrogance of their insolence.
“Fuck off, old man.” He heard it more than once
In the market where he had bartered sheep,
Moving now and then in front of young men.
It was long ago but he remembered . . .
He remembered the children’s painted eyes,
Looking blankly at him, without smiles –
A snake, a saw-scaled viper, slithering
Beside his path. He stopped and raised his staff,
Ready to strike it but it flicked its tongue –
Away. Then miles off he could see his camp
Of tents and flocks and some figures of men
Or women. “We live,” he thought. A lone man,
A mile or so off, was walking toward him.
Suddenly he was aware of how . . . of
How impossible life seemed, and then how
Impossible was everything he did:
Every step he took, and his breath, his hands,
All nothing his own. The figure walking
Towards him, the landscape – nothing was his willed!
Yet – it was! And in all of it, he was
Aware, it was God. And he could have laughed
At
how simple was the truth – “It is all
God!” Then: “Of course, Lord, I can have a son
With Sarah. Everything’s impossible!”
Wanting to laugh, he recalled his laughter
With God, and Sarah’s laughter, and the name,
Isaac – then the memory of the plain,
Burning behind him. He turned round and saw
The smoke rising up over the hillside.
His mind felt stretched by an eternal strength
Of death, of life, of lust, of love. As he trembled,
Ready to collapse in the sun’s sweltering,
In his own mind’s thoughts’ scopeless awareness,
In the insignificance of his life –
He heard a voice, “Papa. Papa. Papa.”
He opened his eyes and there was Ishmael,
Running now towards him, then clutching his hand,
“Papa. Papa. We must go. Everyone is scared.”
Abraham journeyed on to the region of the
Negeb,
where he settled between Kadesh and Shur.
Genesis, 20:1