Adam and Eve's Lament, 1996
Etching, letterpress, 11 x 18 inches

For over a year, I labored on the image of Adam and Eve with the traditional iconographic associations of a tree, snake, nude figures. Michele Burgess of Brighton Press, who published the broadside, suggested the form of an altarpiece with an opening door, and I quickly did this etching for the outside panel. Michele cleverly dispensed with the snake and company, and used only the small image of a burnt-out building.

Eve's Lament
I am granted a few last words from the oak
that only listens; a few vain wishes
and cigarette that I refuse to smoke.
I wish my husband, the minor poet of fishes
and trees, had seen the world with greater vision,
had stoped to hear the ocean's legion
of silent names. See how he ribbons
the trees, as if they were endangered women.
See how he stares at what's forbidden:
each flower and fruit, each orange and lemon.
Why listen to a man who polishes his tongue,
who never took time to listen to the koan
of crashes when he wasn't present? I am on
my way to a country that can't be sung.

Adam's Lament
You came the last but were the first to learn
that coming last you were the first to turn,
a second thought of God's and dream of mine.
I understand the curse of your position.
I too would pray for an obvious sign.
My loyalty softens as my faith conditions.
You were blessed with cause; I can't object.
I understand your wanting back my dream.
Your bitter syllogism is correct:
I am a man and thus not what I seem:
the only child for whom my children grieve
I would have vivified them too from dream,
but they unborn and yet to be conceived,
came only after we had been deceived.

back