The rivulet-loving wanderer Abraham

Through waterless wastes tracing his fields of pasture

Led his Chaldean herds and fattening flocks

With the meandering art of wavering water

That seeks and finds, yet does not know its way.

He came, rested and prospered, and went on,

Scattering behind him little pastoral kingdoms,

And over each one its own particular sky,

Not the great rounded sky through which he journeyed,

That went with him but when he rested changed.

His mind was full of names

Learned from strange peoples speaking alien tongues,

And all that was theirs one day he would inherit.

He died content and full of years, though still

The Promise had not come, and left his bones,

Far from his father’s house, in alien Canaan.