Inside Adam Poem by Robert Rorabeck

My thoughts wake up
Inside Adam,
Before he learns of Eve’s
Transgression—
Then the sun and the world
Are naked and weeping
Newborns,
And there is the earliest
Light everywhere;
The pure heralding light,
God’s fixed gaze.
The world of the garden is
Sonorous with innocent birth
And light breathing,
But I am that speck of
Shadow
Wondering in Adam’s head,
The ache of his missing
Rib,
Wondering where she has gone,
The first premonition of sin:
Of things to come.
I tell him not to round the
Corner to the tree in the clearing,
But he cannot understand how
Everything can be so beautiful,
Yet to have such a thought
In his head—
Then he sees Eve, smiling,
Shadowed by the tree the serpent
Looks down with eyes of adultery,
Smiling his pornographic wisdom,
As her guilty lips drip the juice
Of the most sinister fruit,
The honeyed seduction of a
Fallen angel.
She begins to speak,
But already Adam knows….
He knows,
For inside him, I have
Warned him
And, ashamed he tries to
Cloth himself as
He stumbles through the
Darkening trees,
And the day seems to flee with him,
Fearing the things to come.