I. THE SICKNESS OF ADAM
In the beginning, at every step, he turned
As if by instinct to the East to praise
The nature of things. Now every path was learned
He lost the lifted, almost flower-like gaze
Of a temple dancer. He began to walk
Slowly, like one accustomed to be alone.
He found himself lost in the field of talk;
Thinking became a garden of its own.
In it were new things: words he had never said,
Beasts he had never seen and knew were not
n the true garden, terrors, and tears shed
Under a tree by him, for some new thought.
And the first anger. Once he flung a staff
At softly coupling sheep and struck the ram.
It broke away. And God heard Adam laugh
And for his laughter made the creature lame.
And wanderlust. He stood upon the Wall
To search the unfinished countries lying wide
And waste, where not a living thing could crawl,
And yet he would descend, as if to hide.
His thought drew down the guardian at the gate,
To whom man said, ‘What danger am I in?’
And the angel, hurt in spirit, seemed to hate
The wingless thing that worried after sin,
For it said nothing but marvelously unfurled
Its wings and arched them shimmering overhead,
Which must have been the signal from the world
That the first season of our life was dead.
Adam fell down with labor in his bones,
And God approached him in the cool of day
And said, “This sickness in your skeleton
Is longing. I will remove it from your clay.’
He said also, ‘I made you strike the sheep.’
It began to rain and God sat down beside
The sinking man. When he was fast asleep
He wet his right hand deep in Adam’s side
And drew the graceful rib out of his breast.
Far off, the latent streams began to flow
And birds flew out of Paradise to nest
On earth. Sadly the angel watched them go.
II. THE RECOGNITION OF EVE
Whatever it was she had so fiercely fought
Had fled back to the sky, but still she lay
With arms outspread, awaiting its assault,
Staring up through the branches of the tree,
The fig tree. Then she drew a shuddering breath
And turned her head instinctively his way.
She had fought birth as dying men fight death.
Her sigh awakened him. He turned and saw
A body swollen, as though formed of fruits,
White as the flesh of fishes, soft and raw.
He hoped she was another of the brutes
So he crawled over and looked into her eyes,
The human wells that pool all absolutes.
It was like looking into double skies.
And when she spoke the first word (it was thou)
He was terror-stricken, but she raised her hand
And touched his wound where it was fading now,
For he must feel the place to understand.
Then he recalled the longing that had torn
His side, and while he watched it whitely mend,
He felt it stab him suddenly like a thorn.
He thought the woman had hurt him. Was it she
Or the same sickness seeking to return;
Or was there any difference, the pain set free
And she who seized him now as hard as iron?
Her fingers bit his body. She looked old
And involuted, like the newly-born.
He let her hurt him till she loosed her hold.
Then she forgot him and she wearily stood
And went in search of water through the grove.
Adam could see her wandering through the wood,
Studying her footsteps as her body wove
In light and out of light. She found a pool
And there he followed shyly to observe.
She was already turning beautiful.
III. THE KISS
The first kiss was with stumbling fingertips.
Their bodies grazed each other as if by chance
And touched and untouched in a kind of dance.
Second, they found out touching with their lips.
Some obscure angel, pausing on his course,
Shed such a brightness on the face of Eve
That Adam in grief was ready to believ
He had lost her love. The third kiss was by force.
Their lips formed foreign, unimagined oaths
When speaking of the Tree of Guilt. So wide
Their mouths, they drank each other from inside.
A gland of honey burst within their throats.
But something rustling hideously overhead,
They jumped up from the fourth caress and hid.
IV. THE TREE OF GUILT
Why, on her way to the oracle of Love,
Did she not even glance up at the Tree
Of Life, that giant with the whitish cast
And glinting leaves and berries of dull gray,
As though covered with mold? But who would taste
The medicine of immortality,
And who would be as God? And in what way?
So she came breathless to the lowlier one
And like a priestess of the cult she knelt,
Holding her breasts in token for a sign,
And prayed the spirit of the burdened bough
That the great power of the tree be seen
And lift itself out of the Tree of Guilt
Where it had hidden in the leaves till now.
Or did she know already? Had the peacock
Rattling its quills, glancing its thousand eyes
At her, the iridescence of the dove,
Stench of the he-goat, everything that joins
Told her the mystery? It was not enough,
So from the tree the snake began to rise
And dropt its head and pointed at her loins.
She fell and hid her face and still she saw
The spirit of the tree emerge and grip
The serpent of the earth until it stood
Straight as a standing-stone, and split its seed.
And all the seed were serpents of the Good.
Again he seized the snake and from its lip
It spat the venomous evil of the deed.
And it was over. But the woman lay
Stricken with what she knew, ripe in her thought
Like a fresh apple fallen from the limb
And rotten, like a fruit that lies too long.
This way she rose, ripe-rotten in her prime
And spurned the cold thing coiled against her foot
And called her husband, in a kind of song.
V. THE CONFESSION
As on the first day her first word was thou.
He waited while she said, “Thou art the tree.’
And while she said, almost accusingly,
Looking at nothing, “Thou art the fruit I took:
She seemed smaller by inches as she spoke,
And Adam wondering touched her hair and shook,
Half understanding. He answered softly, ‘How?’
And for the third time, in the third way, Eve:
‘The tree that rises from the middle part
Of the garden. And almost tenderly, “Thou art
The garden. We.’ Then she was overcome,
And Adam coldly, lest he should succumb
To pity, standing at the edge of doom,
Comforted her like one about to leave.
She sensed departure and she stood aside
Smiling and bitter. But he asked again,
‘How did you eat? With what thing did you sin?
And Eve with body slackened and uncouth,
‘Under the tree I took the fruit of truth
From an angel. I ate it with my other mouth.’
And saying so, she did not know she lied.
It was the man who suddenly released
From doubt, wept in the woman’s heavy arms,
Those double serpents, subtly winding forms
That climb and drop about the manly boughs;
And dry with weeping, fiery and aroused,
Fell on her face to slake his terrible thirst
And bore her body earthward like a beast.
VI. SHAME
The hard blood falls back in the manly fount,
The soft door closes under Venus’ mount,
The ovoid moon moves to the Garden’s side
And dawn comes, but the lovers have not died.
They have not died but they have fallen apart
In sleep, like equal halves of the same heart.
How to teach shame? How to teach nakedness
To the already naked? How to express
Nudity? How to open innocent eyes
And separate the innocent from the wise?
And how to re-establish the guilty tree
In infinite gardens of humanity?
By marring the image, by the black device
Of the goat-god, by the clown of Paradise,
By fruits of cloth and by the navels bud,
By itching tendrils and by strings of blood,
By ugliness, by the shadow of our fear,
By ridicule, by the fig-leaf patch of hair.
Whiter than tombs, whiter than whitest clay,
Exposed beneath the whitening eye of day,
They awoke and saw the covering that reveals.
They thought they were changing into animals.
Like animals they bellowed terrible cries
And clutched each other, hiding each others’ eyes.
VII. EXILE
The one who gave the warning with his wings,
Still doubting them, held out the sword of flame
Against the Tree of Whiteness as they came
Angrily, slowly by, like exiled kings,
And watched them at the broken-open gate
Stare in the distance long and overlong,
And then, like peasants, pitiful and strong,
Take the first step toward earth and hesitate.
For Adam raised his head and called aloud,
‘My Father, who has made the garden pall,
Giving me all things and then taking all,
Who with your opposite nature has endowed
Woman, give us your hand for our descent.
Needing us greatly, even in our disgrace,
Guide us, for gladly do we leave this place
For our own land and wished-for banishment.’
But woman prayed, “Guide us to Paradise.?
Around them slunk the uneasy animals,
Strangely excited, uttering coughs and growls,
And bounded down into the wild abyss.
And overhead the last migrating birds,
Then empty sky. And when the two had gone
A slow half-dozen steps across the stone,
The angel came and stood among the shards
And called them, as though joyously, by name.
They turned in dark amazement and beheld
Eden ablaze with fires of red and gold,
The garden dressed for dying in cold flame,
And it was autumn, and the present world.
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