Two Poems on Cain and Abel

Abel looked at the wound
His brother had dealt him, and loved him
For it. Cain saw that look
And struck him again. The blood cried
On the ground; God listened to it.
He questioned Cain. But Cain answered:
Who made the blood? I offered you
Clean things: the blond hair
Of the corn; the knuckled vegetables; the
Flowers; things that did not publish
Their hurt, that bled
Silently. You would not accept them.

And God said: It was part of myself
He gave me. The lamb was torn
From my own side. the limp head,
The slow fall of red tears - they
Were like a mirror to me in which I beheld
My reflection. I anointed myself
To the doomed tree you were at work upon.

-R.S. Thomas, Cain


I read it here in your very word,
in the story of the gestures
with which your hands cupped themselves
around our becoming--limiting, warm.

You said live out loud, and die you said lightly,
and over and over again you said be.

But before the first death came murder.
A fracture broke across the rings you'd ripened.
A screaming shattered the voices

that had just come together to speak you,
to make of our a bridge
over the chasm of everything.

And what they have stammered ever since
are fragments
of your ancient name.

-Rainer Maria Rilke, I Read It Here in Your Very Word