I thought to start here. On this hillside
we first wept. It was another awful
novelty. Throat clenched. My eyes. Wetcheeked.
She had fallen and was hurt and bled.
My own feet also, and the cold.
All new, and of all tears the first.
Pain, yes, and fear, regret alloyed
with it in that shaky heart tight sobbing
until we clutched each other in arms.
Her hot breath and tears and mine
until it passed and relented, exhausted,
and we were eased awhile together here.
Just there by the water, on the far side,
we dug and sowed the first of our gardens.
Where it rises just past: a hole
to hide in. Toolless labor ill-done
then but then we grew defter;
made our ways, fields, knives, a roof.
When she labored her first child
as promised, as sentenced, in sweat and ecstasy
we wept again as the small one nursed
and all that joy! Creation. Blood.
The sixth day again and lambing time
nestled in our den with our mate and our son.
If from the first these tears I had,
and joys, this love, these works, these tilled fields,
these crimes, these grieved losses, these children,
what else bear I in wrapped packages?
There are somewhere bundles of what
we are. They are not marked.
Not before the bright or dark occasions
when these ourselves are presented to us,
and we discover we can weep
and do at once. I considered these things
and held my first son and wondered.
It was not yet plain to me.
I remember now those little hands
wheeling softly about his infant
head always with his brother's throat
opened in the field. His sleeping face
at her breast beside his brother's,
fixed, a mouth of flies.
Raging and lost was I made then.
Each creation fouled after! Children
killing and killed and God the taproot of this damn
whose fruit we choke and choke and spit.
The meat and bones and offal of him
we dug into the dirt that had his blood.
But Oh, the hand of God on Cain was light
and when I quieted I had new wonders:
they themselves had invented the altar,
this bringing gifts He made to God.
And God's first favor so brief and deathfruited,
and on Cain the first of all mercies.
Time grief lightened or maybe worked?
I wonder still how what is past passes,
unlost, different, more transparent somehow.
And next things made over too.
All more bitter and more sweet,
bitter and sweet more often at once.
We would sit evenings up here.
Gentle. Scared. Tired and awake.
The last made things holding together.
I watched crows glean a field I thought
was clean, and heard them speaking
but knew nothing of their speech.
I was learning things, but slowly.
Of toil. When to gather. What to save.
Children she got again, and in my heart
I held these lessons, and thought
what I should learn: our fall, God's favor,
worship, murder and mercy, woman with child.
What this body does I do and am
and am of her, from rib and fruit
and have been. So made and so chose.
As we know each other the joy,
opened only together, of these limbs;
bruised, taut, alive, pressed, scented.
Now grace, our children, we only remembered.
She and I might think or speak
of past things as days broke and broke.
We thought now too of the coming
winters, Seth's aging, what might
pass. Always she and I together.
The weight of all to come is offset
along a long arm by came and done.
Today and I and she the pivot place.
Breath and effort, words of comfort and lovemaking
the fixing of it and of us.
It can seem to me to be this way.
