PROLOGUE

They must have glanced back at Eden,
at least once or twice,
when Adam and Eve were cast out from that first Paradise.
It began with sibilated words from serpent subtle,
to which Eve, in weakness, made rather thin rebuttal.
In consequence of that serpent’s urging proposition,
the first woman committed the first God-rule violation.

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Eve ate of the forbidden fruit to learn of Good and Evil,
and thus, with Adam, sinned in that paradise primeval.
Realization dawned - they discovered themselves naked;
and in shame donned fig-leaf aprons, thus nudity abated.
Self-conscious, as they were, of a new human condition;
together they embarked upon a new world in transition.

They surely had turned their heads
toward Eden in wonder;
seeing angel with flaming sword,
and pondered their blunder.
Was it a glance of desperate, sad, and rueful longing,
in awareness of themselves no longer there belonging?
Untroubled innocence
and carefree happiness once grasped
was forfeit in expulsion as they left, hands inter-clasped.

As Paradise faded from sight and was to them ever lost,
despairing sadness must have set in
as they discerned the cost
in consequence of the pursuit of forbidden ambition,
thus incurring mortality with shallow hope of redemption.
At Paradise squandered, with a final over-shoulder glance,
were they also burdened
by sense of unhappy circumstance?

Finally, turning to look ahead to the task at hand;
they had a world to populate, remote from Eden land.
Forfeiting endless, guiltless and sweet blissful ignorance,
they trod abreast to destiny in relinquished innocence.
And Eve, in time,
would feel more than the first birthing pain
from the monstrous sin committed
by her first-born child, Cain.

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EPILOGUE

In defying God by yielding to the evil serpent’s temptation;
they committed original sin with no hope of salvation.
But we ought ask that,
having inflicted such a costly sentence,
was God moved by this first display
of humanity’s repentance?

Yes!

He pledged His Son so that human plight
would not go unheed’n,
in beholding Eve and Adam looking back toward Eden.

❀

(This poem was inspired by a phrase in one of C. S. Forester’s Hornblower stories: “So might Adam have looked back at Eden;” Mr. Midshipman Hornblower - The Penalty of Failure, C.S. Forester)