A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry

Rebecca to Isaac

220 A Face to Meet the Faces Rebecca to Isaac William Robert Flowers I saw you, walking like someone who is lost in a foreign city. I saw you walking like a child, with your empty hands hanging, and wondering at your shadow, which seemed to fear the weight of your steps. I veiled my face before you, Isaac. How long since your throat lay against that rough altar, and you asked him to bind you tightly, so that your trembling would not detract from the sacrifice? And when he leaned on you with his terrible hands, his hard stone weight like a cataract pouring from his forehead, his ravaged mouth, how his breath fell in that moment and hung there, as a dead limb hangs from low branches. Then a darkness so complete came over your soul that the angel’s voice never reached you; the bright hands that gripped your father’s wrists couldn’t draw your eyes from the shadows dancing on stone. Some said later that your eyes grew weak from the tears of the angels falling into them, as you lay helpless on the mountain. Isaac, how could you bear it? Bound on that altar of stone and broken wood, feeling celestial tears falling into your eyes, like birds in the windows of abandoned buildings. You must have stared, every day of your life, into the sun, blinking to clear their light away— and though you tried to burn it out, you could not, you saw as the dead see: everything both near 221 As It Was Written and far at once, a panoply of instants borne by every moment, dancing in the light of sacrificial fire, the shadow of your own ashes. Now you see this woman coming toward you, a delivery arranged by your father—him, whose weight you always feel pressing into your neck—now. I’ve nearly reached you. ...