Rehab’s House
Now the lean children of the God of armies
(Their feet command the quaking earth.)
Rise in the desert, and divide old Jordan
To crown this city with a ring of drums.
(But see this signal, like a crimson scar
Bleeding on Rahab’s window-sill,
Spelling her safety with the red of our Redemption.)
The trumpets scare the valley with their sudden anger,
And thunderheads lean down to understand the
nodding ark,
While Joshua’s friend, the frowning sun,
Rises to burn the drunken houses with his look.
(But far more red upon the wall
Is Rahab’s rescue than his scarlet threat.)
The clarions bind the bastions with their silver treble,
Shiver the city with their golden shout:
(Wells dry up, and stars fly back, The eyes of Jericho go out,)
The drums around the reeling ark
Shatter the ramparts with a ring of thunder.
The kings that sat
On gilded chairs,
The princes and the great
Are dead.
Only a harlot and her fearful kindred
Fly like sparrows from that sudden grin of fire.
It is the flowers that will one day rise from Rahab’s earth,
That have redeemed them from the hell of Jericho.
A rod will grow
From Jesse’s tree,
Among her sons, the lords of Bethlehem,
And flower into Paradise.
Look at the gentle irises admiring one another by
the water,
Under the leafy shadows of the Virgin’s mercy, And all the
primroses and laughing flags
Bowing before Our Lady Mary in the Eden of her intercession,
And praising her, because they see the generations
Fly like a hundred thousand swallows into heaven,
Out of the jaws of Jerich,
Because it was the Son of God
Whose crimson signal wounded Rahab’s wall,
Uttered our rescue in a figure of His Blood.
