SUMMER Poem: Lament for Eden, by Carter Vance

You faded the other day,
like light in Eire’s west, retiring from beating time,
sun and sweat, closing in shutters
making a mess of bed clothes.

These were the bookshelves we left unorganized,
the tattooed skin I couldn’t interpret,
absent-minded that I was back then.

I was innocent of it,
nursing grief wounds that came unhealed,
scabrous in time, that you had helped sew up
lick clean, dress in silk covering.

And how playful we were, naked, unashamed,
frolicking through meadows, melodious,
without care for cuts a branch bramble
would give to those not heeding.

I fell too easily then, coarse feet against
night air and grass stain;
that the trick mirror had revealed
all was worsened from wear.

As your form turned void, shapeless then unholy,
I wept:

thinking of how we would never again be so close to our Garden,
always so distant from Grace, in glass highways
endless stone arches.