Saturday, June 13, 2009

Sacrifice

The heavens wheel around the point of a knife,
a silver star ordering my life
and re-ordering my past.
I think it may always have been there.
He’s in one of his moods again,
old eyes cataracted with visions,
head tilted to listen.
I listen too,
listen close but hear nothing,
not even my own breathing,
not even my own heart.
He hears. He sways above me
and the world disappears.
He has the eyes of a fly,
in them I’m multiplied,
a brood of children who won’t cry NOT FAIR
when they’re roasted up like a holiday dinner.

Somehow I think this is my fault,
that my hands are bound
while his hands are free, holding the knife.

4 comments:

  1. Iphigenia?
    It sounds very like a modern take on one of the old greek tragedies.

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  2. I was thinking of Abraham and Isaac at the time (some 20 yrs ago!), but Iphigenia works, too.

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  3. Interesting perspective from Isaac...especially the part about whose "fault" it is....and the being multiplied...

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  4. Mompriest: Sometimes I wonder how I ever thought of these poems. It's as if they came from someone else, someone I miss quite a lot.

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