Before God’s voice punctured the clouds
like a paring knife pitting a pomegranate,
before the bleating ram appeared with its arced horn
divine and white as moonstone, there was nothing
but the father binding the son on an altar
of desert stones, the boy’s wrists tethered
by hemp rope, the father weeping like a madman
as the bone scythe trembled in hands that had slaughtered
only the tribe goats with their ugly, horizontal eyes.
But his son would not bleat – Abraham was sure of that,
his palm hard against Isaac’s face as if pressing
unleavened bread into a woven basket,
and what of Isaac’s nakedness, the rough hewn
valley of his abdomen, his biceps strong
and rounded like the shoulders of an ox?
Blade raised, did Abraham think of the beauty
of this man, his son now strong from a lifetime
of herding? How long did Abraham look
at his son’s flesh, smooth as a still river, before
deciding on an entry point? The heart or lower
into the taut belly, or the throat with its tributaries
of veins? All this he considered before God spoke
of salvation. But by then the damage was done:
for the next five thousand years the fields
would glisten with the blood of beautiful sons.
