Mosaic

By Linda Pastan b. 1932 Linda Pastan

1. THE SACRIFICE

On this tile

the knife

like a sickle-moon hangs

in the painted air

as if it had learned a dance

of its own,

the way the boy has

among the vivid

breakable flowers,

the way Abraham has

among the boulders,

his two feet heavy

as stones.

2. NEAR SINAI

God's hand here

is the size of a tiny cloud,

and the wordless tablets

he holds out

curve like the temple doors.

Moses, reaching up

must see on their empty surface

laws chiseled in his mind

by the persistent wind

of the desert, by wind

in the bulrushes.

3. THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT

We know by the halos

that circle these heads

like rings around planets

that the small donkey

has carried his burden

away from the thunder

of the Old Testament

into the lightning

of the New.

4. AT THE ARMENIAN TILE SHOP

Under the bright glazes

Esau watches Jacob,

Cain watches Abel.

With the same heavy eyes

the tilemaker's Arab assistant

watches me,

all of us wondering

why for every pair

there is just one

blessing.

Linda Pastan, “Mosaic” from PM/AM: New and Selected Poems (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1982). Copyright © 1982 by Linda Pastan. Reprinted with the permission of the Jean V. Naggar Agency, Inc. on behalf of the author.

Source: Carnival Night: New and Selected Poems 1968-1998 (W. W. Norton and Company Inc., 1998)

Biography

Poet Linda Pastan was raised in New York City but has lived for most of her life in Potomac, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, DC. In her senior year at Radcliffe College, Pastan won the Mademoiselle poetry prize (Sylvia Plath was the runner-up). Immediately following graduation, however, she decided to give up writing poetry in order to concentrate on raising her family. After ten years at home, her husband urged her to . . .

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