Eden

When you look into her eyes,

Are you not in love with paradise?

You will fall one day, when her skin

Starts to fold and routine creeps in

Like a mildew, and paradise is now

The woman across the way –

Relegate memories to the past and you are finished.

To have had is still to have, just different –

Softer, a bit hazy, a little wiser yet altogether yours;

Count the times a memory proved more fruitful than the branch

So when you are bent to the ground with anxiety

And you long to be lifted like a cat by the hand of God

Know that it is happening when you put your sad mouth to the flute,

Or your broken hands to the harp,

Or you crash into the page like waves onto the beach

And your scrawling is like seaweed –

Just like that, the Eden of your imagination is opened

And you finally see paradise as the tremendous Awe;

Which is to say, we are slaves to desire and, accordingly, disappointment –

Even as we witness, mute with disbelief, those two factions

Making eternal love in our songs,

Is the quest ever over?