18. Naomi nodded No:
“Lookit: I got no more sons in my womb.
Zilch! I can’t give you more husbands—
guys to care tenderly for you.
19. “Leave now, beloved sisters of Grief,
O sad-eyed daughters of Despair!
I say again: I’m too old to remarry.
I’m too old to breed anew;
too old to suckle babes.
I can give you no more husbands!
20. “Besides, even if I could, via God,
find my womb wet, my tits wet,
and I could conceive, birth, and suckle twins
(like the wolf did Romulus and Remus),
how could ya both tarry with me,
playing kiddy games with my boys,
til they were old enough to know themselves men
(say, by age 16),
with desire to wed, bed, and breed
(not necessarily in that order),
and then pray successfully
that they’d choose ya both as brides—
MILFs—
and not next-door, snotty, precocious teen tarts?”
21. Oprah and Ruth wept a deluge now.
(But Naomi speaketh simple truth, Ruth.)
22. Quickly, Oprah packed a knapsack
to quit the sterile widow,
snatch up a sugar daddy somewhere:
She was still nubile, fuckable.
Why go hungry?
Why be lonesome?
23. She sang: “I’s gone.”
Her tone was horse-ass-high, horse-head-haughty.
So went the down-n-dirty hotty,
swishin her bustled bum-bum,
her tight-ass bum-bum.
24. But Ruth clutched Naomi tighter.
25. Naomi shoved Ruth off—
held her at arm’s length,
said, “Tut, tut, dovey!
Oprah’s willing to own
her Destiny:
Why doncha follow her?
26. “I’m like a rainbow—halved—
like assets in a divorce.
Worse: I got nothing!
I’m zero in total,
in fine.”
27. Ruth negativized this summation:
“Whatever you’ll eat, I’ll eat.
Wherever you’ll eat, I’ll eat.
If you starve, I starve.
Wherever you’ll sleep, I’ll sleep.
If you camp under trees,
and rain or dew needle thy face,
my face will be just as wet.
Thy God is now my God.
28. “Where thou diest, Naomi,
there diest I.
Where thou art buried, or burnt,
or flung,
so must I be interred, or torched,
or hurled.”
29. Realizin that Ruth won’t be shaken off,
Naomi quit agitatin for a solo sojourn.
30. The pair trod desert to Bethlehem,
where, astonished were the citizenry,
asking,
“Art thou truly Naomi—
Husbandless, sonless, homeless, penniless?”
31. Naomi arrested such Denunciation,
such implicit Scorn,
by stressing that an evil, tireless wind,
a tiresome wind,
had blown down all her blessings.
32. “Jeez,” said Naomi:
“Don’t call me ‘Naomi’ evermore!
Call me Mara—bitter—
because the Lord hath crushed out
all my sweetness.
33. “I’m the victim of a Conspiracy
as evil as a spider’s—
as diabolical as what entrapped Job.
34. “Day after day, no one sees the sun spying.
And the moon, rising in China,
doesn’t hear my Israeli sobs.
35. “I once had Plenitude—
enough for an Eternity.
But God’s planed me down to Destitution,
and my double-lineage is dead—
Genealogy buried under Geology:
My sons are two headstones.
My husband’s but a third.”
36. This acrid homecoming occurred, ironically,
at harvest—
for barley from surrounding fields
was being weighed and priced
and scooped for sale;
or it was being sacked and stored;
to be kept or bartered in Bethlehem.
[Waterford (Ontario) 12 avril / Nisan
& Black Friday the 13th aprile mmxviii
& Buffalo (New York) Friday the 13th April mmxviii]
