Adam Had an Eden

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in mankind is the end of kind 
in woman the beginning of woe 

i 

So long as I can sing of Eden days  
and Eve, presumptuous as an almond blossom, 
I shall not shout our age’s agonies, 
bending between extinction and extinction. 

ii 

See the apple of Adam’s eye, 
hung on a rib on a rack in a storm, 
bearing her lover’s love: pain called  
fruit, wrung from wrenching flesh . . .  

Weeping Eve hears man in the wind, 
his wooing moan her long “Oh no,” 
for in mankind is the end of kind  
and in woman the beginning of woe. 

iii 

Once upon a time, Adam had an Eden, 
savage with butterflies, roaring with bees. 
Days were dreams: windless trees  
whispering as a quiet river flows 
by its brim of humming sunflowers. 
Rock-a-byed in this gentle doze, 
half-hidden in verdure for hours,  
Eve tastes the tang of the sun 

            like melting butter on the tip of her tongue. 
            She’s swimming in goldfish kisses: a fin  
            winks like an eyelash, tingles her skin:

a hide-an’-seek lambkin is teasing  
her toy, a purring leopard, sleeping. 
Lying alone, cooled by bluebell dew  
amid limb-born fruit fallen below, 
the languid sun caressing through  
the flex and muscle of vine in slow 

            liquid motion, she drowns in rivers of berry  
            amid bubbles of grape, clusters of currant,  
            apricot-crush and peach, tangerine, cherry. 

iv 

So long as I can sing of Eden days  
and Eve, presumptuous as an almond blossom, 
I shall not shout our age’s agonies, 
bending between extinction and extinction: 

            inexplicable war’s raze, 
            peace, its cankered interim, 
            raging ambivalence of men en masse, 

                                    none of these, 
so long as rosebuds are raw nerves  
                        in her flesh  
and the spring-wringing robin 
            twangs, twangs, 
like a broken harp string . . . 

*Adam had an Eden = Adam-ondi-Ahman