And a river went out of the place of pleasure to water paradise.—Gn 2:10

Adam…could not have inferred from the fluidity and transparency of water that it would suffocate him….—Hume

 

The botany that blessed Mendel’s pisum—

Has petals come to thorns, and bliss, regret—

Our parents feet found Heraclitian streams

In Eden’s river, but their seeded rot

Despoiled its promised acres—this, despite

A course of graces flowing to present

Our arid minds a thought to irrigate:

We walked in gardens once—and that’s the point.

 

Perhaps our view at large accords with Hume’s—

No seed effects its fruit except to set

Starvation’s stage—the blossoming of dooms

Which man must brave alone, an oak offset

Against a desert’s thirst no rain could whet,

And only slick sidewinders’ tongues anoint

While whispering mankind’s weed-choked kismet:

“You walked in gardens once—isn’t that the point?”

 

But bury deep such philosophic dreams

And keep in mind that we were once well met

By sacred nomenclature’s nobler blooms—

Salvation’s scent replaced by Adam’s sweat

And thorns supplanting beauty’s own rosette—

We bled the color out of Eden, bent

Its stems and broke its limbs—and all for what?

We walked in gardens once. Is that the point?

 

O Prince of patch and plot, who can delete

The damage done? The everything we can’t

Repair, your greener thumb lets cultivate.

You walked in gardens once—and that’s the point.