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.
