Adam's hand wrestled and bound:
unsubmitting, defiant, in anger, rages;
The Name of the upper hand is known,
but denied, and the Son of Man blasphemed.

I lay naked under the moonlight
For God to see the Apple with a bite
Though unlike she before me
There's no shame to see
I lay bare as a sinner
Like Judas before the last dinner
A taste of forbidden lust
My virtue in others hands I now trust
Just a simple bite
Has set my body flight

There is a snake there, waiting
venomously for an apple that makes its fangs fall out.
The first of sentient apes turn on immortal creators,
and are charged in the eye of Justice
for every extraordinary discovery in the ensuant history of
sin.

eve conversed with a sinuous snake
on a Sunday afternoon
the garden barred its double doors
and sent them to their doom
the sin of she had punished he
who touched no snake in the apple tree
but if lilith with the dawn had gone
how innocent can adam be?

Happy and content
in this garden of delight,
yet curiously alone.
Am I one of a kind?
On the verge of sleep
as the sun slips under its blanket.
After the butterflies,
after the somnolent dream,
I was bestirred
by what first seemed a chimera.
The grace and splendor
of a remarkable creation,
and there she stood
making doe eyes,
a twinkle of a smile
curling about her lips.

At once I was besotted,
God had bequeathed to me
His crowning achievement,
and into my care she was placed.
So much to impart,
so much to share.
Together now as united residents,
one flesh,
she will complete me,
and I will dote on her.
A gift to always cherish
as we walk hand in hand.

Her task each new day
is strolling about paradise
in search of nourishment,
to feed us from the fruitage therein,
lest one tree’s offering.
And yet this morning,
another voice summons to be heard,
the rasped utterances
of the cunning,
with tales of his own kingdom coming,
one nibble to freedom, she was assured.
How I wish she’d taken her leave.

She proved too inquisitive,
it took root,
this germination,
and there she lingered.
Eyes caught, unblinking,
her open heart
heavy with wanton hunger.
Who whispered unto you, my darling?

Standing before me
I surrendered to her,
an ill-fated collusion,
co-conspirators to sin.
We ate in the shadow of a silver birch
and awakened to our nakedness.
Eyes wide open!

Discomfited, we struggled
to conceal our shame
What has happened to us, dearest?
Avowal and discord.
Trouble and strife.

"It was the woman you gave me!"
"It was the serpent," she countered.
A betrayal to our God
neither of us wished to confess.
Dust had been thrown in her eyes,
my transgressions were clear-sighted.
Together now as
evicted tenants,
flawed, imperfect flesh,
she will pine for me,
and I will reign over her.

Oh, how I vanquished this gift,
this blessed union.
What tragedy,
what irony:
As I take her hand,
I also fully understand
she is now eternally,
irrevocably,
lost to me...

The fair test
The  temptations from the evil guest
The contest
The jest
choosing an apple  over eternal rest

Guess who am I?
The forbidden fruit
The humanity foolish tribute

I am not sad not even sorry
For the limitless lust for glory
Is the butterfly effect of the story.

Adam Lay Ybounden
(anonymous Medieval English Lyric, circa early 15th century AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Adam lay bound, bound in a bond;
Four thousand winters, he thought, were not too long.
And all was for an apple, an apple that he took,
As clerics now find written in their book.
But had the apple not been taken, or had it never been,
We'd never have had our Lady, heaven's queen.
So blesséd be the time the apple was taken thus;
Therefore we sing, "God is gracious!"

The poem has also been rendered as "Adam lay i-bounden" and "Adam lay i-bowndyn." Here is the original poem in one of its ancient forms:

Adam lay i-bounden, bounden in a bond;
Foure thousand winter thought he not too long.
And all was for an apple, an apple that he took,
As clerkes finden written in theire book.
Ne hadde the apple taken been, the apple taken been,
Ne hadde never our Lady aye been heavene queen.
Blessed be the time that apple taken was,
Therefore we moun singen, “Deo gracias!”

Keywords/Tags: Middle English, translation, Medieval English, Adam, Eve, Genesis, Garden of Eden, apple, God, grace, gracious, Mary, heaven's queen, Lady, clerics

The poem was inspired by a particular photo of the WT C, and after that by my first visit to the 9/11 Memorial.  On the day of 9/11, I was working about a diagonal mile away, and from our windows, we could see people jumping to their death.

Open sky annulled
to bordered lines of
uptown edges,
worldview momentarily
forcibly redefined by
memories of buildings and sadder days,
recollections of pillars of biblical smoke rising

A photograph
makes me look up,
and sit down historically,
need to catch a breath,
to rest mentally,
upon a storied small bridge's steps,
that I well recall,
a disappeared street stoop.
all were rubble then and once
upon that day.

Wear, tear, and older eyes distill perspective,
but the hardy heart is hardly stilled
by the recognizable gray upon
bon vivant gray reflective surfaces of
memories of buildings and sadder days

So today, on a reborn street,
I rest upon reconstituted speckled curbstone,
the city's lowered down ledges,
the city's lowered down-town boundaries,
constantly redrawn, but
nonetheless, always rebuilt from their own
regenerated stony compost,
and the NY passersby doesn't even notice
a man, head in hands,
silently weeping, thinking that:

We throw away so much we should have kept.
We keep so much we should have thrown away.

Lose keepsakes, but keep our mysterious sadnesses
locked away in compartments that open only to
benedictions uttered in ancient tongues.

Make your own list,
be your own curator,
catalogue visions of sophomoric triumphs,
museum mile pile
those early poetic drafts,
be unafraid of memories
raw and ungentrified,
overlaid, buried underneath
postmortem of dust-piles of senior critiques

Finally went downtown to see
where the blessed water falls
into catacomb pits that once
were the foundations
of buildings that ruled the cityscape,
downtown anchors
for a modern city that exists
only because it was built on
million year old granite bedrock

Stone monuments are stolid, discrete.
Memories are of grayed, frayed edge consistency.
Negatives resurrected that survive digitally,
all blend synthetically, layer upon layer,
essence distilled in a single,
black and white photograph
that serves to
disturb complacency,  
awaken stilled pain,
reflections suppressed,
are restored