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Noah’s Wife

By Linda Gregerson b. 1950 Linda Gregerson

is doing her usual for comic relief.

She doesn’t

see why she should get on the boat, etc.,

etc., while life as we know it hangs by a thread.

Even God

has had one or two great deadpan lines:

Who told you (this was back at the start—

the teeth

of the tautology had just snapped shut) Who

told you you were naked? The world

was so new

that death hadn’t been till this minute

required. What makes you think (the

ground

withers under their feet) we were told?

The woman’s disobedience is good for

plot,

as also for restoring plot to human

scale: three hundred cubits by fifty

by what?

What’s that in inches exactly? Whereas

all obstinate wife is common coin.

the beginning was nothing and then a flaw

in the nothing, a sort of mistake that amplified, the

nothing

mistranscribed (it takes such discipline

to keep the prospect clean) and now the lion

whelps,

the beetle rolls its ball of dung, and Noah

with no more than a primitive double-

entry audit

is supposed to make it right.

We find the Creator in an awkward bind.

Washed back

to oblivion? Think again. The housewife

at her laundry tub has got a better grip.

Which may

be why we’ve tried to find her laughable,

she’s such an unhappy reminder of what

understanding

costs. Ask the boy who cannot, though

God know’s he’s tried, he swears

each bar

of melting soap will be his last, who cannot

turn the water off when once he’s turned it on.

His hands

are raw. His body seems like filth to him.

Who told you (the pharmacopoeia has

changed,

the malady’s still the same) Who told you

you were food for worms?

What

makes you think (the furrow, the fruit)

I had to be told?

Linda Gregerson, “Noah's Wife” from Waterborne. Copyright © 2002 by Linda Gregerson. Reprinted with the permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Source: Poetry (December 1998).

Biography

Linda Gregerson is the author of several collections of poetry and literary criticism. A Renaissance scholar, a classically trained actor, and a devotee of the sciences, Gregerson produces lyrical poems informed by her expansive reading that are inquisitive, unflinching, and tender. Tracing the connections she finds between science and poetry, Gregerson says, “I think there are rhythms of thought, fragile propositions about the . . .

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