Abraham had no time for the future, the “river of faces”:
mighty kings, fools who would bear an imprint of his mind.
(Gifts behind a current he wasn’t permitted to see!)
He noticed the light flicker inside his distant tent.
Let all goat-hair be God’s! Let the night trees move
His song. What can a servant do but follow?
He imagined his past, people ill-used, shorted:
“Let every enemy I’ve made be blessed, double;
let me be broken enough to give them ear.”
Who is this generous: the Hand that carves the plains!
Himself, he was nothing, a gatherer of sheep, a man
alone, without instruction—a man without place.
What could he give but the cooling night in the ground,
the ways of animals? Perhaps it was his common
ways that marked him: the snore, the open-mouthed nap?
His heart was not a father’s heart today.
It was a leafy passage, the waking of smooth stones.
He would be a desert welcome: for animals, men.
