Noah’s Wife

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is doing her usual for comic relief. 
 She doesn’t
 see why she should get on the boat, etc.,

etc., while life as we know it hangs by a thread. 
 Even God
 has had one or two great deadpan lines:

Who told you (this was back at the start—
 the teeth
 of the tautology had just snapped shut) Who

told you you were naked? The world 
 was so new
 that death hadn’t been till this minute

required. What makes you think (the 
 ground
 withers under their feet) we were told?

The woman’s disobedience is good for 
 plot,
 as also for restoring plot to human

scale: three hundred cubits by fifty 
 by what?
 What’s that in inches exactly? Whereas

all obstinate wife is common coin. 
 In
 the beginning was nothing and then a flaw

in the nothing, a sort of mistake that amplified, the 
 nothing
 mistranscribed (it takes such discipline

to keep the prospect clean) and now the lion 
 whelps,
 the beetle rolls its ball of dung, and Noah

with no more than a primitive double-
 entry audit 
 is supposed to make it right.

We find the Creator in an awkward bind. 
 Washed back
 to oblivion? Think again. The housewife

at her laundry tub has got a better grip. 
 Which may
 be why we’ve tried to find her laughable,

she’s such an unhappy reminder of what 
 understanding
 costs. Ask the boy who cannot, though

God know’s he’s tried, he swears 
 each bar
 of melting soap will be his last, who cannot

turn the water off when once he’s turned it on. 
 His hands
 are raw. His body seems like filth to him.

Who told you (the pharmacopoeia has 
 changed,
 the malady’s still the same) Who told you

you were food for worms?
 What
 makes you think (the furrow, the fruit)

I had to be told?

© Michael Rosen