On the Eighth Day

by James Como (March 2019)

The Fall of Man, Titian, 1550

Our very Eve stretching slowly far

Down, coolly supine, languorous in repose

beneath her tree, its fruit still whole to the look:

eyes gazing, full-lit caves, beckoning,

ablaze in the dark, quickening our abandon,

inviting our genius to divinity

our mourning as yet unreckoned.

Here, in this dank ether,

voluble intent congeals against

that unreflected light, begotten

not meant to adorn: one in

being with the Weeping Root.

Only its sweet and rinsing well

gives Utterance on that day—

                   the spring of all days,

                   the spring of life eternal,

                   the beginning of the end

                   of all our winter longing.

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James Como is the author, most recently, of The Tongue is Also a Fire: Essays on Conversation, Rhetoric and the Transmission of Culture . . . and on C. S. Lewis (New English Review Press, 2015). His forthcoming book, from the Oxford University Press, is C.S. Lewis: A Very Short Introduction.

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