Noah’s Wife

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. In 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?