“In the beginning,” there was beauty and bounty…exile and fury. To reread Genesis in our era of intractable wars and mass displacements is to recognize ourselves in its imagery. Within Joanna Chen’s poem, the instant before Cain kills Abel lingers and fades out—as if the story might have ended some other way.
—Jody Bolz, Poetry Editor
ELLIPSIS, GENESIS
We speak of beginnings
as we trudge uphill to the observatory,
sparks lifting in the sudden gloom—
our laughter ahead of us, our sadness
hovering somewhere in the firmament
within the unrhyming silence
we long to articulate.
Clouds gather above our heads,
and there’s a pause in the script:
three dots as Cain’s eyes scan the ground
for a rock. Three dots while Abel,
standing a little away from his brother,
turns around to face him,
faint surprise circuiting his face.
Another pause…
Adam and Eve, offstage in the dark,
are still fumbling together—
dirt under their nails, anger in their hearts—
until a sudden breeze whips up,
and clouds make way
for the next calamity.
Joanna Chen is a writer and translator who lives in Israel’s Ella Valley. Her latest translation of Tehila Hakimi’s Hunting in America is forthcoming from Penguin. Her own work has appeared most recently in The Washington Monthly, Consequence and Lilith, among others.
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