Lot's Wife by Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966) (Akhmatova, translated by D.M. Thomas, Everyman's Library Pocket Poets)

And the just man trailed God's messenger,

His huge, light shape devoured the black hill.

But uneasiness shadowed his wife and spoke to her:

“It's not too late, you can look back still

At the red towers of Sodom, the place that bore you,

The square in which you sang, the spinning-shed,

At the empty windows of that upper storey

Where children blessed your happy marriage-bed.”

Her eyes that were still turning when a bolt

Of pain shot through them, were instantly blind;

Her body turned into transparent salt,

And her swift legs were rooted to the ground.

Who mourns one woman in a holocaust?

Surely her death has no significance?

Yet in my heart she never will be lost,

She who gave up her life to steal one glance.

We are each a bundle of nervous impulses: to fidget, to gossip, to be distracted, to inquire, and especially to satisfy our scalding curiosity by looking at anything we're told not to look at. “Don't look at that woman over there, she's the one I'm talking about” - so, of course, we look.

Lot, his wife and their two daughters were led from the town of Sodom by two angels who could not find ten righteous men in order to spare it, and the neighbouring town of Gomorrah, from total destruction. Despite being told not to look back as they followed the angels into the hills, Lot's wife could not resist one last parting glance at the place that had been her lifelong home. As a result, she was turned into a pillar of salt.

This raises the question: should any parting glance merit death? And if her two daughters had witnessed the punishment of fire and brimstone that rained down upon those towns - including their husbands, who would not go with them - then perhaps they would not have wickedly connived to get their father so drunk that the resulting incest (with one each night for two nights) impregnated them both. No comment is made in the Bible as to whether or not this was frowned upon.

The poem is about temptation and giving in to it; it is about our weaknesses. Lot's wife doesn't know what will happen to her if she looks over her shoulder, so there is nothing that might cause her fear or second thoughts. The description of her eyes “still turning” even as they were stricken by the pain that blinded her, makes me imagine that she was conscious of her transformation, albeit for a split second only.

If time were immaterial, then that second might encapsulate an entire lifetime for some, and so Lot's wife's pain might have seemed an eternity to her. Was she, who has the misfortune to be without even a name, able to assimilate the fact that her sudden immobility was a direct result of a curious look over her shoulder? She is turned to salt because she disobeyed the request of angels; Lot goes on to commit incest with his daughters who bear him two sons who are also his grandsons, and the biblical world doesn't bat an eyelid. This seems somewhat unfair.

The poet asks who mourns one loss among so many in a “holocaust”. One death amid the annihilation of the entire population of Sodom and Gomorrah is surely of no consequence. Yet the poet professes to hold Lot's wife in her heart; she lost her life for a small muscular twitch of the neck that was only obeying a curious mind.

While there is nothing laudable about giving up one's “life to steal one glance”, the death of Lot's wife was distinctly individ-ual. Lot was just a man with a bit-part in the Bible, trying to escape destruction, but his wife became a pillar of salt in a spectacular fashion. The means of her demise makes her memorable; that a natural human impulse was the cause lends her death a tragic - if cautionary - aspect. Although her perceived sin is trite in comparison with that later committed by her unpunished husband and scheming daughters...

frieda.hughes@thetimes.co.uk

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