Adam is exiled, Eve remains; a fancy
Ennui
She lowers her hands, long accustomed to joining
in the still posture of humility:
now she forgoes the sacrament of prayer
and dreams her silent mornings out. The songs
of little birds who crowd the Garden,
who make a raucous shivering in the leaves,
give her a tender pleasure, but not peace,
nor solace for her hours of grief
that halt and hesitate, and never pass.
Eve To The Angels
Ethereal guardians,
I have seen through you,
but have heard the ruffling of wings
on rare occasions when you stretch, settle,
and resume your infinite watch.
The moon, shedding cool silver,
ascends the darkness,
round or sickle-silhouetted.
What flowers blossom from her breast?
What cold petals drop like diamonds
in what phantasmal gardens
to gild what prisoner's pain?
Ages Hence
In limitless aether angels clash, rend clouds
that fly at fiery heels of seraphim;
obsequious cherubs sing perpetual lauds
and kneel concordant at a radiant Hem;
mammoth gears of ancient engines grind;
spirits divided by opposing passions
conjure tempests: wild empyrean wind
of Thrones, Principalities, Dominations.
Our Lady of the Garden lies unshaken.
Errant tresses spread in beds of fern.
Ages of exile pass, yet she, forsaken,
nervously awaits her love's return.
The chill of grief infinitely lingers
in the patient folding of her fingers.
Epilogue
Awakened at cock-crow, our solitary exile
lies abed and silently rehearses
the posture of Death, which she can never assume:
her fingers folded at her midriff, still
as standing water, and yet warm and tender,
blushing with the bloom of life; her eyes
sealed with volition, not shut down like blinds,
nor penny-weighted. Waiting in the darkness,
Adam, in full flush of innocence,
and naked in the light of memory,
will wait for her forever; but he wakes
no more to mortal seasons, changing weathers,
or crowing cocks heralding sunrise. Dust
is what has come of flesh that dressed his bones,
that struck her fancy, plucked her maidenhead;
dust now committed to the earth, to cycles
of change that never turn in paradise,
where she remains, naive in purity,
in solitude forever sanctified,
in sickness of inviolable health,
where blossoms in profusion burst, and bring
the constant, cloyed calamity of spring.
Ennui
She lowers her hands, long accustomed to joining
in the still posture of humility:
now she forgoes the sacrament of prayer
and dreams her silent mornings out. The songs
of little birds who crowd the Garden,
who make a raucous shivering in the leaves,
give her a tender pleasure, but not peace,
nor solace for her hours of grief
that halt and hesitate, and never pass.
Eve To The Angels
Ethereal guardians,
I have seen through you,
but have heard the ruffling of wings
on rare occasions when you stretch, settle,
and resume your infinite watch.
The moon, shedding cool silver,
ascends the darkness,
round or sickle-silhouetted.
What flowers blossom from her breast?
What cold petals drop like diamonds
in what phantasmal gardens
to gild what prisoner's pain?
Ages Hence
In limitless aether angels clash, rend clouds
that fly at fiery heels of seraphim;
obsequious cherubs sing perpetual lauds
and kneel concordant at a radiant Hem;
mammoth gears of ancient engines grind;
spirits divided by opposing passions
conjure tempests: wild empyrean wind
of Thrones, Principalities, Dominations.
Our Lady of the Garden lies unshaken.
Errant tresses spread in beds of fern.
Ages of exile pass, yet she, forsaken,
nervously awaits her love's return.
The chill of grief infinitely lingers
in the patient folding of her fingers.
Epilogue
Awakened at cock-crow, our solitary exile
lies abed and silently rehearses
the posture of Death, which she can never assume:
her fingers folded at her midriff, still
as standing water, and yet warm and tender,
blushing with the bloom of life; her eyes
sealed with volition, not shut down like blinds,
nor penny-weighted. Waiting in the darkness,
Adam, in full flush of innocence,
and naked in the light of memory,
will wait for her forever; but he wakes
no more to mortal seasons, changing weathers,
or crowing cocks heralding sunrise. Dust
is what has come of flesh that dressed his bones,
that struck her fancy, plucked her maidenhead;
dust now committed to the earth, to cycles
of change that never turn in paradise,
where she remains, naive in purity,
in solitude forever sanctified,
in sickness of inviolable health,
where blossoms in profusion burst, and bring
the constant, cloyed calamity of spring.
