A father gives up his only child to die, <br />the son of a whore seals his daughter's virginity. <br />She dies intact, burnt as an offering <br />to the one in whose image she is made. <br /> <br />The story (the way he's told it) says <br />she insists he keep his vow, <br />unthinking promise in the heat of prayer <br />to sacrifice the first thing he sees <br />if he comes home from battle victorious. <br /> <br />She wrings from him two months of grace <br />to wander in the hills and grieve <br />that she will not die as other women, <br />as her companions in tears will die: <br />worn out by war and famine, <br />bled dry by relentless childbirth. <br /> <br />Two months and then the binding, <br />the flash, the flow, the spark, the smoke, <br />offered to the one in whose image she was made, <br />who, an age later, <br />will also give up an only child to die, <br /> <br />yet who, far farther in the future, <br />will watch countless children of Jephthah <br />squirm and die and be consumed <br />and still not interfere.<br /><br />Wild Bill Balding<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/jephtha-s-daughter/
