Lost in Paradise

You'll have guessed by now that Malcolm Guite's "The Word in the Wilderness" is proving to be an inspiration to me this Lent, and whilst I cannit begin to compare my humble offerings with his poetry or those if other poets he has chosen, it is good to be prompted to channel my feelings into poetry again. The past few days are a case in point, where I have found myself sliding into a bit of a slough again. Perhaps it is a reaction after the stimulation and exhaustion of last week's trip to Rome for the Focolare Assembly, but some of it is about personal circumstances, and the perilous state of the world at present. On Monday the selected poem was an excerpt from an Elizabethan poet I had never read before; John Davies. In it he uses the idea of the fall to question so of the "learning" much lauded in that era. It struck a chord with me and this is my riff on a similar theme.

I was taught that to eat fruit was good,

To devour knowledge voraciously,

And to discern carefully good and evil.

I am the very incarnation of the fall.

And as I stare aghast through open eyes

I am ashamed of what we have wrought,

The shoddy garments we are clothed in,

Even those who claim to walk with God.

I want to hide away, aware of my impotence

In the face of naked greed and hatred,

The celebration of cruelty and revenge,

The lust, for power and for fresh flesh.

And so, the promised progressive paradise

Becomes a place to be defended

With fiery sword against the others

Who would come to steal it from us,

Until, finally, after all the other others

Have been repelled or expelled or worse,

We all find ourselves on the outside,

Toiling, never to return to that good garden. 

If only we hadn't listened to that snake,

And consumed more than we needed.

Is paradise only for those who are blind  

to what is going on around and within us?

Selah