An angel's voice saved Abraham's white head
From shame: It turned the trembling knife away.
The altar was mere stone again--instead
He cut the cords, not flesh, and laughed to say
The tired joke once more, the son he bred,
This Isaac--just jesting heaven's cat-play.
At least he got the punch-line and his son.
(But had Jehovah's joking just begun?)

Surely there is no balm in Gilead.
No bloody beaten Ammonites who face
Sheol--nor rams however myriad--
Could purge the rust-dried rivulets, the trace
Of altered god and man, whose sin, he had
Known, visited the children. What of grace
Was still in heaven? Curse the maw above,
This Moloch-Yahweh who picks his teeth of love.

And so these four days' laugh-lament each year . . .
The festive weeping on the mountain might
Amuse such deity. He plugs his ears
To mute the joke, but still he cannot quite
Forget the echo of his vow. He hears
Divine derision in the harsh delight
Of buzzards cackling overhead again:
This blood-lust of Jehovah turned heathen.

Why, Spirit of the Lord, such mystery?
He broke the tambourine she played that day--
That day he swallowed oath and victory
With daughter-blood. Remembering her grey
Eyes staring at the clouds, their history
Of girlhood summers ready to obey,
To wed the mountain god and bloody knife--
A trembling kiss before he took her life.