Poem: The Revised Version

1:1 God hovered over the welter and waste
      on the face of the deep.

1:2 His brooding condensed
      in droplets of light
      and conceived the shore of speech.

1:3 And he cried, Yehí! Let-it-be!
                    
1:4 From his own breath he fashioned
      that command
      and he called it good.

1:5 He called everything good
      in the beginning.

1:6 Night fell, the first of many.

First published in The Manhattan Review.

Chana Bloch is the author of four books of poems, including “Blood Honey” and “Swimming in the Rain: New and Selected Poems 1980-2015.” She is co-translator of the biblical Song of Songs and Israeli poets Yehuda Amichai and Dahlia Ravikovitch.