Lot's Wife

She had no name, she was property
until that glance reduced her to salt
a stain on the fabric of history
if curiosity were her only fault

then she must have been a poet,
whose righteous husband offered daughters
to enemies before deflowering both
so unfurl the centuries and watch her

change costumes, customs, names and faces
betrayed by friends, raped by gangs
scorched at the stake, sold as a slave,
declared a witch, tried, and hung

until she steps from a cafe in Leningrad
tucking her blouse in a thick waist, she glances
back to describe the circumstances
that drove other women mad

Recounting in lurid detail the pillars of flame,
collapsing causeways, Trains tremble
past peasants plowing old fields
husbands and sons are tortured again

She should have never looked back
she should have turned to salt like the rest
she could have left for Paris
never once turning to witness the wreck

or reopen the wounds of her nation. But poets
seldom make good citizens. Their heritage
is to survey and record the wreckage
with the passion of one possessed

So she wanders deserted streets, over and over
who never averted her eyes or chose to fled
articulating through parched lips, desperate for fluid
I am she who turned back, I am Ahkmatova.