ID#: IWAPoetry4Adult500

Abraham

If you were not my Secret,
How could I ever have found you,
Among the tents?

If I were not your own Secret, jealously guarded,
How could I ever have submitted
To being called Your friend?

When I knew myself alone,
Exiled from the world,
I discovered your secret Name
Inscribed on the Guarded Tablet.
When I emerged from that solitude,
To lose myself in tribes and armies,
You felt my loss.
You searched for me everywhere,
Found me in my exile,
And named me Your friend.

At Your command I raised my right hand
To kill my only son;
I looked again, and he was Thou:
I dropped the knife.

When we sat together on a cushion of grass
Inside the Walled Garden of the Mysteries,
Eating from our own vine and fig tree
And talking to our heart’s content,
The desert, shimmering white and yellow
On the horizon beyond us
Stood in need of the clear Arabic tongue.

In love you led me
Into the barren places of the earth.
In anger you drove me, with slaps and bitter words
Toward the chamber of Night
Where you were waiting for me already,
Watching over my sleep,
The rising and falling of my breast,
Till the mazes of the stars and the night of time
Passed over, and the morning came.