Jon Huer writes

THE SEDUCTION OF JOB: Twenty Years Later   

A Dramatic Poem

CHAPTER EIGHT

Bashana, the avenging maid, laments on love and men.

BASHANA TO SELF:  

How bloodless, how passionless is Job, 

My master and the perfect man of my life;  

I loved him as I love myself, and more, 

When I had hope of him eternally mine;  

But I despise him with all my anger within me 

As I know that it cannot be, now or ever!  

The power of my love for him is so great, 

But the force to wish him destroyed greater still,  

That I eat my anger like my daily bread 

And I sleep my madness beyond all reason!    

Poor Job who is loved and hated so, 

But Bashana who loves him is poorer still!  

I see him in my dreams of sweetness and sorrow, 

And my smiles appear without my consciousness;  

But the dreams are followed by my utter loneliness, 

And loneliness by my anger and rage renewed  

For his destruction from his own high stature, 

His devastation beyond all measures of recovery,  

And humiliation by the rod of his own righteousness!   

What is the nature of my love for this man  

That distorts my vision and takes away my strength 

To reason with my anger and control my rage,  

And to hear the voice of calm that should be heard? 

Why do I love him so until I am breathless  

And despise him so to call upon heaven for vengeance? 

The power of my love that is beyond measure  

Is overcome by the force of my anger, stronger still, 

That torments me with the demonic whisper:  Revenge!  

As my love's power and my hate's force combine 

To blind all my sense and darken all my reason  

I am no longer my own person, but a stranger, 

Driven only by mad love and wild hate!    

O Job, if you could be mine and mine alone, 

To be in my arms at the dawn of the day  

And to be in my presence as the darkness falls; 

Or if the garden of your love could bloom again  

To fill hell's emptiness with heaven's treasure 

And to erase the void in my obstinate heart,  

God would save me from this madness and fury 

From loving you so blindly, and hating you so morbidly!    

I am smothered by the power of love uncontrollable 

And exhausted by the force of hate raging within me!  

The wheel of love and hate, tenderness and wrath, 

Turns endlessly, and I spin with it!    

O Job, you found me fetching and fair 

And my words of praise flattering and pleasing  

To all your vainglory and manly blood, 

Falling headlong in your passions and errors‑‑  

Yet when the time of reckoning came calling 

You deserted me in favor of loyalty and tradition  

To your society, and to your wife and family, 

Forsaking me and abandoning my love  

As if there mattered neither the memory of your passions 

Nor the burden of your errors to remember,  

As if nothing of any consequence ever happened!   

O Job, how I hate your society that applauds tradition  

For the established manners of goodness and faith, 

And how I despise your wife and family  

That demand loyalty to public vows and bloodlines! 

Having neither the society to uphold and mind,  

Nor the family and bloodlines to which to return 

For protection and consolation after the deed is done,  

I see nothing but the fury of my heart 

And hear none other than the cry of its rage!               

O Job, you cruel and heartless man, 

Like all other cruel and heartless men before,  

With little or no understanding of women 

Whose soul of love that can melt steel and silver  

Can also turn into the fiery furnace of hate, 

Whose heart of affection that fears no death  

Can also call upon hell's revenge when betrayed! 

The gods created men of cruelty and heartlessness  

And women of infinite love and exquisite hate 

Perhaps as players in a never‑ending drama  

For celestial amusement and story‑telling. 

But my love's tale unfolds in pain and sorrow,  

And my hate's drama in vengeance and destruction!   

Tomorrow I shall visit the king's chief counsel  

And tell my story of scorn and betrayal 

Committed by the greatest man of his land,  

The renown sage and wise man, Master Job!

 

 Lot's Wife -- after William Blake