Resurrection, Imperfect

Daughter of my father’s people,
Comfort of my mother’s loss,
Rescue from the nightmare’s terror,
Lover, rival, stranger, wife:

Our sins are piled like mounds between us,
The ruined tells of jealousies
Between our children, between admiring
Glances traded in foreign halls.
A hundred small betrayals buried;
A hundred times each slight exhumed.
With this wealth of crafty failures
Hoarded, counted, a single regret:
After weighting ourselves with cunning,
Forgiveness frees us just this once.
Peace comes late to clever men.

My father gathers me to his bosom.
My arms no longer reach for you,
My ears cannot attend your moving,
But my blind eyes see your beauty still.
With faithless flesh at last reformed,
When sins are settled in their grave,
Then we shall lie so close, so close
We cannot even see each other’s face.

I wrote this poem almost ten years ago. It is probably the only poem I have written that I am really proud of. I had been thinking about putting it on the blog ever since Julie the Bookworm published this post.