Jon Huer writes

THE SEDUCTION OF JOB: Twenty Years Later    

A Dramatic Poem

CHAPTER FIVE 

Bashana confronts Job with her lamentation and is rebuked.

BASHANA TO SELF: 

O Master Job, the perfect man of my life, 

How I count the hours to see your countenance, 

To bury myself in your warm bosom! 

What other mortal man can captivate me 

Like the majesty of the rising and setting sun 

And like waves of oceans pulled by the moon. 

Your words are like water in a dry garden 

And your touch comforts me like the sun's dying glow 

To a toiling man who longs to quit. 

O Master Job, but you are not with me; 

The void in my heart grows larger by day, 

My longing for you grows stronger by night. 

I hear the rustle of your garments 

And the echoes of your voice round about, 

But your breath and embrace are far from me. 

How can I endure this agony any longer 

When the desire for you overwhelms all my senses?  

BASHANA TO JOB: 

O Master Job, the perfect man of my life, 

What passage of time since we became one, 

And our souls were united in the flesh! 

I long to see your countenance by day, 

And my sighs fill the silence of the night. 

O Master Job, leave your wife and come to me: 

My life is a slow death that is forever late arriving, 

And my sleep a race to the dawn against my sighs. 

Divorce your wife and come to me, my Master.  

JOB: 

Bashana, who took back years of my age, 

Who awakened my flesh to pleasure and shame, 

Whose fair beauty and quick mind all but blinded me, 

Do you realize what you are saying?  

BASHANA: 

How can I not know what I am saying 

When you are the companion of my breath 

And the sleep-mate that fills my empty nights? 

How can our flesh be the cause of your shame 

When it is the measure of my very living 

And the wall that separates me from death? 

Leave your wife, divorce her, and come to me.  

JOB: 

Passionate words and frightening assertions! 

What has unleashed such power, such passion, 

Terrifying and destructive in their intensity, 

So sudden and ominous, begun so meek and pleasing?   

Who are you, the strangest of women‑‑ 

A devil sent by Satan to do me evil 

Or an angel sent by God to warn me of calamity? 

O Bashana, I cannot divorce my wife 

Any more than I can shed my own skin, 

Or the sun its fire and light, 

Or the moon its glow and the stars their brightness. 

Love fades like the wake of a passing ship, 

Pleasure of the flesh like a distant memory. 

Speak no more of love, flesh or divorce.  

BASHANA: 

Cruel words and passionless assertions! 

Who are you, the grandest of men‑‑ 

A hypocrite who says one thing in public 

And does quite another in private? 

How can your lips that speak wise words to all 

Say such cruel words to me when alone‑‑ 

How can your mouth that whispers sweetness by night 

Utter such passionless assertions in daylight?   

Has your ship already passed into a distant memory? 

Hypocrisy and cruelty, shame and passionlessness! 

The perfect man is a perfectly cruel hypocrite 

Who loves the flesh when passion stirs his blood, 

But who loves himself more when calm returns.  

JOB: 

Do not be too harsh with me, Bashana, 

I am a man of honor and reputation round about. 

BASHANA: 

Throw your honor and reputation to the dogs! 

I curse you to the company of hypocrites; 

I damn you to the worst fate of a coward! 

May you be haunted by my rage and fury; 

May you fear my revenge, dark and violent! 

I will leave your household in rage; 

And I shall gather my belongings in fury, 

With my heart broken and my soul shattered. 

May you live long, the great one, 

So that you may mourn along with me 

My night's sighs and my day's laments,                                                                                       

And may you long be tormented without rest 

By my rage and fury, dark and violent, 

And the vengeance sworn by a scorned woman, 

For none is darker and more violent 

Between the God‑created heavens and earth. 

May you live long, O Master Job!  

BASHANA TO SELF: 

O Job, poor man, defeated and lost‑‑ 

Defeated by his own flesh, incorrigible, 

Lost in spite of his knowledge, high and deep. 

All his piety could not uphold him, 

Nor would all his vaunted wisdom help. 

A great man is but a child 

When thrust upon a woman's charm unaware! 

Useless is his learning or resolve 

Under the spell of his eternal nemesis! 

He could not resist when I praised his wisdom, 

Nor could he sustain his piety when flattered. 

His knowledge was rendered powerless and useless 

When I appeared and befuddled his senses.

The poor man is puzzled and angry: 

Puzzled that all his wisdom failed him; 

Angry that he was overpowered by the flesh. 

Poor Job, defeated and lost, puzzled and angry‑‑ 

With the weight of all the weak and stupid men 

And of all the fatal guile ever spun by women 

In the singular encounter enacted over and over 

Since Adam and Eve lost their innocence. 

Pity the man but not his stupidity; 

And damn his misfortunes conceived in weakness!   

But suffer he must to match mine, 

For I, too, am confounded by my own riddle 

Of having deserted my wits at a time 

When I needed my head clear and my mind strong, 

My heart impervious and my soul fortified. 

As Job became stupid and weak with me, 

So did I in the presence of a great man, 

Ennobled by his words, sweetened by his deeds, 

Until the day something came over me 

And whispered to me to demand justice, 

To insist upon all, to have all, or none.   

O poor Job, O miserable Bashana, 

Locked in a dance of uncertain steps 

We slide toward hell in wonder and wrath: 

His price is reckoned in his judgment and fall, 

Mine in the tears of a scorned woman! 

I came and conquered him, heart and soul, 

But I also muddled my own mind and head, 

And in grief and bitterness, powerful and deep, 

Must I call for his blood and death!

                                                                                   

 

 Job's Evil Dreams -- William Blake