Noah was a good man and could follow directions,
but Avraham was more than that: he knew
that righteousness is not a static perfection
but an improvisation that stays true.
He had the understanding to see through
the fixed idolatries the state imposed
and the community’s conventions too,
by which the individual mind is closed;
moreover, he could recognize the ways
his forebears’ characters had shaped his own.
All these ingrained distortions of the gaze
he could remove, so as to heed the One
eternally self-realizing truth
which at each instant signals us: Go forth.