Broken

(A meditation on the mystery of Genesis 32: 24-32.)

"Broken"
(emrys tyler 2011)

Out of the darkness and sliver of moon
Drifted a stranger, a wraith-man of doom;
He came without greeting

Night-wrestling strangler, he grabbed at my limbs
Muscles contorting, teeth gritted and grim
My strongest grip meeting

Till in the deadlock with twist and a bend
Out of the hip-joint my thigh did he rend
A strike for defeating

Whose hospitality shows up at night,
Welcomes a stranger by starting a fight?
Who leaves his name never spoken?

Clutching in spite of the star-spinning ache
I dreaded, terror-struck, that he would take
My breath in his pressing

Then his first words, “Let me go,” did he say
“Dawn-light comes quickly,” the warning he gave
My weakness addressing

Trick-fearing, wary I'd never survive,
Needing a sign that he'd leave me alive,
I asked him a blessing

Who offers mercy right after the fist,
Back-handed love, or a grace with a twist,
Good words in agony soaken?

“Jacob,” he told me, “your shadows grow long
With your close blood-kin a record of wrongs
Has made you notorious

“Israel is your new name for all time
Nations will tell of you in song and rhyme:
In struggle victorious!”

Dawning then came to my soul what I'd done:
Gone nose-to-nose with a heavenly one
An enemy glorious

Who was this messenger, able to bless
Me with a name to be wrung from duress?
Surely an angelic token?

Sunrise revealed him gone without a trace,
Save for the cripple that's twisted my face
And soured my song

Curious grandchildren point out my limp;
“God,” I then tell them, “has made me a gimp;
The story is long.”

After they’ve heard it, I make sure they know
Hobbling pride is the way our God shows
To whom we belong

What kind of visitor comes in the night?
What kind of angel hides from the light?
What kind of God leaves me broken?

~ emrys