Abraham Invents Faith

How down scatters when a dove
is slaughtered -- a softness almost
like heat to the fingers -- a voice
like that, wide and soft as a star's
heart-beat said: Go forth. I went.
I, a businessman from a land of dealings,
of pocket gods like lucky pebbles,
into the mountains where they do not even
bury their dead. I don't
know why. That voice, his
spangled promises. I believed them but
I didn't go for promises. Such
as they were -- my semen like
the river of heaven, my children's
children ranked like stars. We had
no children. Then in old age,
one. The promise we heard
and laughed, businessmen given
an incredible bargain, but at the birth
we saw and laughed, and named him
Laughter, Only-One, Beloved,
Isaac. And the voice said: Go. Slaughter him.

I went.
I don't know why.

I believed
but not for promises.

To the slaughter site in the mountains.
To the mountains like unlike my mind
of ziggurats, to the mountains
through hail and lightning, my heart

tumbling like a dove
and a hawk,

like two hawks
mating.

My heart a hawk-mate
of fear and trembling,
of joy and a new thing
(the Voice called)
I named it Seeing.