The humid night, thick as tar,
Dripping from a bloodied star,
Soaked me with a trembling dream
Of drowning in a silent scream:
I saw a man whose name was love.
Whose feet were love; whose hands were love.
I saw this man whose flesh was torn,
Whose head was pierced by brutal thorn;
And as my people cheered for blood,
He wheezed and wept: “My God! My God!” ...
I stabbed awake at early dawn
To find my husband armed and gone:
With lancing rain wailing down
And warfare shaking in the ground.
I, whose name they call Jael,
Have this, my story here to tell:
A nursling of the desert priest
Whom Moses shared the desert feast;
And heard it told from Jethro’s tongue
That God above, alone, is one.
Moses in those tents found life.
So I, a faithful Kenite wife:
On Kishon river, near the tree
Where Sisera, he came to me -
A whirlpool of sweat and mud,
Though tremulous of man and flood,
With dreadful veins and feverish breath,
He came to cower from his death.
“I’m thirsty”, gasped the mighty man
Who, once a monster, claimed this land.
Who once oppressed my people cold;
Now a frightful child: behold.
Beneath the boughs in Zaanannim:
I calmed and made a lamb of him.
I gave him milk for he was spent,
And lay him down inside my tent.
Beyond my door the rain had eased.
I sat beside him on my knees
And brushed the hair caked on his brow.
Sisera lay quietly now.
To my ear there came a voice
Most tenderly and with this choice:
“Love your Father, he loves you.
Love your enemy here now, too.”
Then all at once the voice was gone.
The sun above us warmly shone,
And with a workman’s hammer I
Sought to let the evil die,
and kissed him on the temple, kind.
Sisera: I changed his mind.
His temple, yes: I destroyed it.
I helped him, also, to restore it:
Nursling of a desert priest,
Who dreamed that love is deepest peace.
And yes, I pinned him to the ground:
Where the strongest roots are found.
Moses in these tents found life;
So I, a faithful Kenite wife:
Where Sisera, the beast, lay dead
But born, anew, his heart instead.
