A Strange Hatching

A Strange Hatching 

Into Eden fly the winged elohim  

screeching like owls, scattering dark mist  

and whirling about, their wings flapping shadows  

over baffled beasts below.  

The first of the elohim selects an animal  

on two legs & calls it Adam.  

Into the brainstem a long needle of DNA  

is inserted.  

The second elohim draws out a rib  

from a gash in Adam’s side.  

From that rib a female of girlish proportions  

is fashioned & named Eve.  

Grinning like an ape, Adam lays her,  

right there, & desires her wet & pliant  

& fruitful.  

Six nights Eve’s belly conspires a hatching.  

On the seventh, there emerges –  

from a nest of hair –  

An egg containing a son entwined with a – what?  

The son is named Abel.  

He is white like an alabaster Apollo  

with a shepherd’s staff.  

For Eve, Abel is the air that remains after you exhale.  

The other is named Cain.  

He is a dark idea beyond belief –  

a dumb caliban with amphibious features  

and a serpentine air.  

For Adam, Cain is the dirt that remains after you shit.  

Being beautiful, Abel can confer beauty  

on many things.  

Abel goes around beautifying  

the animals & giving them wonderful names.  

He even confers dignity on Adam  

who is still in a state of desire.  

With Abel the elohim are well pleased.  

But Abel does not bless Cain, does not word him  

into being because he is neither man  

nor beast & cannot be made beautiful.  

So the elohim clutch Cain away  

& drop him into  

the reptilian waters of the Nile.  

[Life goes on.]  

II  

[Years pass.]  

One evening, I detect a shadow  

at the kitchen door: a lizard-like creeping  

on the porch.  

[A knock at the door.]  

A night-robber, perhaps,  

Or a snub-nosed viper come to sup  

From the cups of my sisters.  

[Abel ponders.]  

Father is mute as the door opens.  

Mother drops her basket of apples & flees.  

My breath is hard & laboured  

like a woman about to give birth.  

This creature, this thing in the doorway –  

It is crocodilian.  

Skin: tough and cracked  

Teeth: pointed.  

Lips: Thin blue smirking  

a purple shadow across the kitchen.  

[Cain peers into the house.]  

Cain slides in; makes himself at home,  

In this, the nest of my family.  

He says nothing but stays for days, grinning.  

When will he go?  

Indignant, I feel like murder.  

I am not his brother.  

I am not his keeper.  

There he sleeps in my bed,  

That smirk spreading over long-jawed cheeks.  

An idea pecks its way through  

Delicate eggshell thoughts.  

A slender silence howls in my ear.  

I stand over him,  

my heart a drum,  

my hand a rock,  

my fist a stone,  

my arm a knife.  

[From outside the room the grasses whisper  

& the night-birds shriek.  

A serpent slinks around the chamber pot.]  

I feel a groaning and a shaking upon the earth.  

I must make my mark or be marked.  

I raise my arm to confer the first blow.  

Need I go on?