Flood Sacrifice
He opened a window,
the cupola's shutter,
sole whimsy to this massive
gopher-wood coffin of a boat.
No mast, no steering possible
to where the world
swirled to an end.
Not time for the dove launch,
the grooves on the ladder's top
rung marked day thirty of
the promised Forty.
A Sound, not rain, spliced
the drifting—
a faint rhythm, a drumbeat ap-
proaching—his own
heartbeat? De-
moralized
panic?
He stretched further,
listing into the celestial river,
beard channeling danger for the remnant below.
Mantle saturated,
rivulets coursed
shoulder to sandal.
The cadence intensified,
steaming reminder of
his only world—
Clamminess of a last chance.
Would that his mantle
billow and hover
above the syncopated waves,
above the constant whump of
outside objects, all
in stages of decay—
rudder and lower planks,
sounding boards of wasted echoes!
Between flashes of lightning
the reckoning:
an ax-shaped image descending.
A beak, a giant parrot's beak?
No, an unearthly outline of a
mouth from which the
drumroll now roared—
overpowering everything.
What to take in,
impossible to tune out,
the pitch polarized his heartbeat—
lethal synchronicity.
What life after this massacre—
were the Nephilim to colonize
the earth after all?
Would the Adamic race
now serve a new kind of creator
whose thirst for
death impaled that
for life?
What sacrifice could ever appease
such a god, a vortex not
even the elements could defy?
***
Some one would have to be offered—
not the beasts.
Replenishing the earth was their birthright;
the fulcrum of flora and fauna
beyond the children's ken.
Undiluted human blood could
distill this cesspool of death,
offer the first fertilizer.
Were the Mother, the Garden, the vineyards
never to return?
What sin had turned the God
he had willingly, fearfully worshipped to this?
*** He didn't know. ***
God had picked him,
relatively righteous.
His own propagation completed,
the couples collected,
he'd become the patriarch of orderly patience,
only to be tortured in
this eternal wet night by
guilt?
Those last desperate souls...
pleading had replaced the jeers:
Ropes!
Seasick, he
opened his palms.
Death roiled about him—
how to cajole an unknowable god?
How to invite infinity, eternity
inside to witness the beauty of pregnancy,
to join baby rodent games,
bird song?
The drumming subsided,
he knew what he would do—
unfathomable conviction.
Back down the ladder,
grope in the darkness,
grip the unnamed
stone used only for
cutting the cords of mammals
and for grafting the
vine.
His feet had sunk into
velvet soil for
the last time.
Before raising the stone to his neck, he cried out,
You will teach your children how to play!
Copyright 2008 by Janice Lamberg
Critique by Jendi Reiter
In this month's critique poem, "Flood Sacrifice", Janice Lamberg dramatizes the story of Noah, with a provocative new ending that connects this episode to later Biblical stories of sacrifice, death and rebirth. In her retelling, Noah feels that he has to make the case for the preciousness of earth's creatures, in the face of God's destructive wrath. Lamberg enriches her story with tactile details that demonstrate why this world is to be cherished, such as the "velvet soil" in the closing lines.
Like Moses pleading with God after the Israelites turn to idol worship, the protagonist of "Flood Sacrifice" is willing to back up his plea for God's mercy by offering his very life in exchange. For Christians, this theme recurs most dramatically in the story of Jesus' death and resurrection. The poem's title echoes the familiar phrase "blood sacrifice", often used to refer to the atonement.
From the very beginning of the poem, the reader is convinced that this is a real person in a real place. It is so believable that the ark would have a small touch of "whimsy" to relieve the fear and boredom of a long confinement on a journey into the unknown, and that the inhabitants would mark the days like prisoners scratching grooves on a wall.
Noah is immersed in a chaos of sensations ("the constant whump of outside objects", "sounding boards of wasted echoes"), attempting to cling to his faith in a merciful God when all he can see around him is danger and disorder. These lines were especially vivid: "The cadence intensified,/steaming reminder of/his only world—/Clamminess of a last chance" and "Between flashes of lightning/the reckoning:/an ax-shaped image descending./A beak, a giant parrot's beak?"
We feel how overpowering is the evidence of his senses, which tells him of doom, meaninglessness, confusion. Yet he fights despair with other sensory memories: "How to invite infinity, eternity/inside to witness the beauty of pregnancy,/to join baby rodent games,/bird song?" This reminded me of a common pattern in the Psalms where the speaker begins by lamenting his misfortunes and his feeling that God is absent, then revives his flagging faith by recollecting how God has blessed His people in the past.
"Flood Sacrifice" has many eloquent lines that made this poem stand out among critique submissions. However, there were places where the line breaks didn't match the cadence of the phrases, and interrupted the flow of the poem. I'm generally not a fan of breaking a line on weak words like "a" and "the" (e.g. "unearthly outline of a/mouth from which the/drumroll now roared"). While this does highlight the important word at the beginning of the next line, it does so at the expense of making the line break seem arbitrary (in ordinary speech, one would not pause after "a"), which suggests that the author is having trouble maintaining a poetic voice as distinct from prose. A more natural cadence would follow from putting the breaks after "mouth" (or "of") and "drumroll". Similarly, I would have made "for grafting the/vine" all one line.
By contrast, elsewhere Lamberg more effectively uses very short lines for emphasis: "this eternal wet night by/guilt" and "whose thirst for/death impaled that for/life". Prepositions have more forward momentum to carry the reader to the next line; for me, "a" and "the" feel orphaned without their nouns.
How are we to interpret Noah's final outcry, "You will teach your children how to play"? We expect this sentence to end in "pray", a sufficiently serious remedy for a sin great enough to warrant the destruction of humankind. Surely this is no time for playing around. But let's think this through... People who can no longer play are those who take themselves too seriously, wanting to seem too sophisticated to look at God's creation with childlike wonder. Or they are ashamed and self-conscious, like Adam and Eve after they acquired the forbidden knowledge of their nakedness. Noah's dream is that humanity will once again reflect back God's spontaneous, creative spirit, and remind Him—"cajole" Him—to love us.
Where could a poem like "Flood Sacrifice" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
Fish International Poetry Prize
Entries must be received by March 31
Irish independent publisher offers prizes up to 1,000 euros and reading at West Cork literary festival; enter and pay online only
Dancing Poetry Contest
Postmark Deadline: May 15
Prizes up to $100 plus opportunity to have your poem presented as an interpretive dance at festival in San Francisco
This poem and critique appeared in the March 2008 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Categories: Poetry Critiques
