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BALLAD OF NOAH'S DAUGHTER, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: The first person to set foot on land was noah's daughter


The first person to set foot on land was Noah's daughter
(the others were afraid
that some inopportune bog god
might require the heavy cost of a human sacrifice)
and in the unsteady substance
of effervescent seeds
she kept walking,
still not entirely
delivered from her dream.

...and a big serpent appeared, sheathed
in crossword scales, and in a stream
that narrowed, rippling,
two perch gave an amorous dappled leap.
A hundred plant-ducklings took flight,
leaving behind their shells
that the sea had pushed onto a sandbank.
The sandcloaked frog appeared, ravenous
for small prey that the quiet
had emboldened, and a trout
with its swollen egg-case
bestrode a whirlpool of the lake
already refilling its mold completely.

A lengthy wail
announced the presence
of the Angel of Beginnings.

In the Ark, meanwhile,
a tumult of revelry: the last cask
is ransacked right down to its placentas;
the cock teaches
how vulgar and strident is the death of night.
In the riotous Animals' Sabbath
burdensome species and sex are mixed
and the incense of the sacrilegious altar
is a shameful breath...

But by now
the first tuft of dried palm trees
is ready to succor any flying creatures;
obelisks of victory, the mountains have resurfaced
and they shine on the troubled expanses of receding water.
Far from the Ark's polluted stench
Noah's daughter
hardly shivers in the new aromas:
nor does the olive tree with open arms high above
move her;
the others
the ones of the big boat now navigating sand
the men the beasts
are celebrating: and you can't tell
whether what you hear is a whinny
or the squeals of a sow giving birth, or drunken laughter;
you don't know if it's a snarl or the fury of a quarrel or the rut
of an unclean coupling. You don't even know
if those who inhabit the Ark
would like to stay prisoners
or having converted to a capricious deity (who demands
in exchange for liberty
the extinction of an undesirable species),
they are seeking to appease him with deceit.

Meanwhile she,
the daughter of Noah
watches over the anxiety
of the rock that presses like a mature foetus
and spurts out in the low tide,
she looks at a gallery of rock
that, emptying itself, becomes a cathedral.
She knows
they're celebrating in the Ark, and yet
it's not a celebration:
the day of the great sun is still far off
(while she was baking flatbread,
Noah's daughter spoke at times
to a wandering cherub)
when the holy words shall be read,
far off the banquet of joy
when the flesh of Leviathan shall be eaten.
The angel with seagulls' wings
-- that with its wailing leads
every beginning --
gets ready to blow the oliphant.


Used by permission of Story Line Press.




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