Sacrifice
after Genesis 22.2: Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.
Let fathers bind their sons
to altars, so the wind
might winnow the chaff.
Let a million feet
trample out
a threshing floor.
Let the harvest moon
light the hunter’s path.
Let the guns begin again.
Let the earth feed
on bone-meal and rain,
let fire do its work.
*
The ground gives to spring, marks
digging men with chalk, the Somme
moves gentle and slow. Primroses
litter No-Man’s Land and solemn
broken trees sprout green buds.
Men clamber into the uproar
of a summer morning. Some drown
in fire, some lie close with the earth
and feel it quake, of those some blacken
into filth, some crawl, try out sound
and scavenge words. In the quiet that follows
starlings cloak the shifted sky
*
I am wire tangled into
the approximate shape of a man
in a fireside chair. At dawn
rain broke heavy along the valley,
sent sheep bleating to the trees.
If I dream gas as wood-smoke
it isn’t so harsh on the throat.
By chapel time, sun spilt
through clouds blinding the road.
I am waiting for the mud
on my boots to dry. When still
I can hear the choir.
Martin Figura’s most recent collections Dr Zeeman’s Catastrophe Machine (Cinnamon Press) and pamphlet Shed (Gatehouse Press) were both published in 2016. The show of Dr Zeeman began touring in 2016. He was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award and won the Best Spoken Word Show Saboteur Award for his previous show Whistle. He’s performed all around the UK, including several Latitude Festivals, Bang Said The Gun, Rally and Broad and a number of leading poetry festivals, such as Stanza and Ledbury. He lives in Norwich where he runs Café Writers. He is a retired army major.
Note: This poem was commissioned by 14-18NOW: WW1 Centenary Art Commissions, Norfolk & Norwich Festival, and Writers’ Centre Norwich.