Mike Cope
Note: El was the chief Canaanite deity in pre-Biblical times. He had a wife, Asherah. He and their children, the Elohim, were assimilated into the later
conceptualisation of God, but the all-male priesthood appears to have left Mrs God out. The poem is from my novella, The Fall of Ugarit.
How can I speak of Asherah
when there was neither an I who could speak,
nor an Asherah to be spoken of,
when there was only a single life?
How can I not speak of Asherah
when I must speak,
and there is nothing else
that can be spoken of?
How can I compare her
to the pomegranate or the rose?
Apples and dates are useless for similes.
Pure milk is sour beer, fresh dew is mud.
She was my day and my night.
When I opened my eyes,
it was her image that filled them.
When I closed them, it was to dream of her.
I was the right side, and she the left;
she was the front and I was the back,
each giving meaning to the other,
each nothing without the other.
She brought the rain in from her blue sea.
I plucked it from the clouds
and watered all the flanks
of Mount Saphon and beyond.
When I was lost among the oaks
on the flank of Mount Saphon,
she came for me.
She led me to the best path though I didn’t know it.
When I came to the Mountain,
she was already there.
She caught me in her noose.
She tethered me at the summit,
helpless beneath the Sun and the Moon.
Featured on 16 September 2021