A Bloody Husband

A bloody husband thou art because of the circumcision. Exodus, IV, 26

Now February's name is March;

The winds chose for us: flood or parch,

And bare the shoddy earth below

The soft irrelevance of snow.

The child's hand tears the leaf from leaf

To learn time's names and will believe

The boundaries of the calendar,

Though all the grievous blood demur

And flow from twenty-eight to one,

To cry, "The season's never done;

Time bides no circumcision!"

O love, I lay and could not weep

Between those bright angelic teeth,

Head, neck and chest, down to the balls,

For my God's sake and for the false

Delays, delays! You took the stone

And hacked the foreskin from my son

Till God's mouth freed me and I stood

In all that bleeding, free of blood;

Then cried, "O bloody husband!" and

Wept into your sullied hand,

Until the child began to weep,

And cast his flesh before my feet.

LesLıe A. FIEDLER