Adam on His Way Home

By the wayside, three crows sat on a cross. It was a long journey back, the rank road Passable only on foot, and his memories Were little consolation. What good was past Happiness or, for that matter, past Suffering? Dignity, in these limp days, Was poor payment for leaky eyes. There was nothing To set against thin death as in the old times.

The buzzard sun flapped in his face, rattling The stones in his wrists, his elbows, his ribs, with a tide Of pebbles mumbling in his humbled ears, "Nothing, nothing." Between his toes lizards Ran where nails cracked and peeled. And this Was not the mud of penitence, but decay. This was the limp time, with cramped air clotted In his nose, his tasteless tongue shrivelled dry as rope.

And then, although he was not superstitious, It happened, as he always knew it would. Beneath the first fruit tree, a draped figure, Featureless, shaped as if by wind on water, Drew him down gently, whispering, "Come to me, I am the one!" His forked breath parted the wind, Like clothes fallen away, and there she lay Smiling with his eyes, his lips, and his fierce tongue, All grown young: his forked breath breathed apart Her foaming water-thighs, with the dark clutched between, His own, his calling dark, smelling of home, Where he leapt in the final spasm of first love.