Dinah
(Genesis 34)
Some say I was raped - that’s what they called it when
The one man who is not my dozen brothers
Took me, unasked, between my father’s tents and
The city of my lover’s kin - he took me and I, afraid, cried out
I knew then that I was lost; ashamed, a burden to my father
A man who wrestled God, and did not give up
Until the morning light revealed his crippled soul
Oh, Shechem, beloved prince, who forced me down
Then swooped me up in loving arms, I knew
His tortured soul, lost in the depths of his anguished eyes,
I forgave him the indiscretion.
I had found my husband in the sand, shifting in the desert winds
Would that I could have warned him, known my brothers’ lies
And saved the city from its bloody circumcision, all males
Wracked with pain and torn away like the raw flesh of manhood
Ripped to shreds by my oh-so-loving brothers, left to rot in the desert sun
While my brothers ravaged my husband’s mothers, daughters and sisters
Not one left untouched, not one left innocent, not one left, not one
I - who am I but worn and weary widow, now, begging for a crumb?
And they, the sons of vengeance, dare
To blame it all
On me
©10 September 2009
Suzanne Jacobson
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