Erasure’s Resistance

Job’s extraordinary urge
To obliterate himself,
To die, to not have been born,

To never have been conceived—
For the date that began him
To have never existed,

Swallowed by the calendar,
World that never had a Job
To know of, to contemplate—

This seems more than suffering,
More than only a death wish.
This is an angry protest.

That there could be such a world
That could suggest a fable
Of any Job’s existence

Is itself sheer wickedness—
Better no world at all than
A world this inconsistent.