Now I the anti-Jacob night-long lie
wrestling with my dark angel for my soul:
there is no hold he does not know—and I,
so subtly does he intertwine with mine
his limbs, so wreathe him close, I cannot breathe
but for his breathing.
Better like Isaac in the waste bound, blind,
waiting the rough knife’s thrust should God my blood
require, than strive and strive, only to taste
the old salt of defeat and loss and shame,
unless I be by some grace justified....
But now—from bed to wall I turn my face
and take the fall.
Note: This is a revision of one of my earliest attempts to achieve “significance,” albeit autobiographical.
It dates from the 1960s. At that time I had not overcome the influence of the archaic language
of the literature of the 16th through 19th centuries in which I had immersed myself. In this
case the syntactic inversions in conjunction with the sequences of stressed vowels parallel and suggest the conceit.
Some readers might discern the influence of G. M. Hopkins as well as that of earlier poets.
