Lot's Wife

The just man followed God's messenger, 

vast and bright against the black hill,

but care spoke in the woman’s ear: 

‘There’s time, you can look back still,

at Sodom’s red towers where you were born,

the square where you sang, where you’d spin,

the high windows of your dark home,

where your children’s life entered in.

She looked, and was transfixed by pain,

uncertain whether she could still see,

her body had turned to translucent salt,

her quick feet rooted there, like a tree.

A loss, but who still mourns the breath

of one woman, or laments one wife?

Though my heart never can forget,

how, for one look, she gave up her life.

Anna Akhmatova 

Note: The reference is to Lot’s wife in the Bible, Genesis 19:26. To read more click here