Delilah's Testament

In another story, I am patriot, and he
murderer -- that little matter
of the thirty slaughtered for a riddle,
the hundred for an insult
to his pride. And do you know
about the crops, how Sampson
called up fifty foxes and tied their tails
with torches? The flax went up
like a sail in wind, the vineyards burned
as slow as men. Is that my sister
running from the field with her hair
smoldering? Does it matter?

I'm still down as Delilah,
seducer, betrayer. And it's true.
I kissed, I stroked, I murmured
how can I take that lovely power?
He told me, three times,
lies. Each time I betrayed him:
bound him in his sleep and called my brothers.
And yet he stayed. And yet, I held him,
with my brothers dead, with my walls
blood spattered.

And when at last his secret whispered,
when I sat with his head in my lap,
and the straight gleam of the razor --
when his cut locks curled between my legs
I knew at last the source of power. I held him
shorn and sleeping, remembering
how he called the foxes,
how his god sent him
water from the stones. Ah that
is love -- to send a blessing undeserved
and past all reason. And so I am loved,
and blessed. I called my brothers.

_____

A first draft, a bit rough. Read more poems from this series.