When He first plucked a rib
Small enough to floss His teeth
And from it grew a woman, a toy,
A plaything for Adam to lie to,
To hide the truth of the garden from,
To tempt onto apples with more slime
Than the snake slithering around the tree,
Did He know you were waiting in the wings?
Did He know,
Before time existed, what woman would become?
Who could have known, watching man
A half-formed thing, down a rib.
Who would have seen you coming?
Did your mother, unnamed,
Look onto you as a baby, crying, naked, truthful
And know what she had brought into the world?
Did she realise her child
Was more than God could ever create,
A happy accident, a spillage in a petri dish?
Made of no other metal than earth,
Of clay and veins, of ashes and dust, untainted.
Who could have known, watching you,
Your lungs burning with every scream,
Your words living trapped in your throat.
What would you have said?
Who would have seen you coming?
Did the angels, looking back,
Dressed in hypocrisy,
Looking more like men than you had ever thought;
Not beautiful monsters with grace,
Not ethereal embodiments of salvation,
But men who ate your house
And burned your city.
Did they look back at you, standing
In front of your house as it smouldered,
And know what you were capable of?
Making dinner while your husband offered
Your daughters up like they were meat.
Who would have seen you coming?
Did you, as you stood,
Consider morality, philosophy, the universe?
The thoughts running through your head
As smoke ran through your hair
Were surely nothing cavernous,
Not great wells of thought to swim in.
You thought of your neighbours,
And how a God that would punish them
Without offering repentance or redemption, just fire,
Could be considered ‘merciful’.
You were human.
You doubted.
You looked back.
Molly Burns - poet 