Heavens and Earth

Chapter 37: ABRAHAM’S BOSOM

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About This Book

The collection assembles varied lyric and narrative poems that range from reworkings of classical myths to sharp urban vignettes and satirical sketches of modern life. Several longer pieces retell mythic episodes with vivid, imagistic language, while other poems observe city streets, public figures, and personal loss with concise reportage and elegiac restraint. Recurring concerns include desire, mortality, war, and social disorder, framed by a tension between heroic past and everyday present and rendered through formal experimentation and dramatic monologue.

ABRAHAM’S BOSOM

So the world darkened, as if ink were poured
Over a picture, clotting jammily;
And there was really nothing left to see,
And I was just beginning to feel bored
—They might have let me drive the hearse at least!
I’d love to dangle on the plumes and kick
Fat-vested mourners—when, in half a tick,
Light gurgled from the sky and filled the East.

I walked on something squashy like a tire,
Rebounding heavily where’er I trod,
Set with black plants that grew like tangled wire....
I’d just begun to look around for God,
When mountains fell, the skies gaped crimson-shot
And thunder took the earth....
A voice said “Vot?”