Saturday Poem

No Snow Fell on Eden

as i remember it – there was no snow,

so no thaw or tao as you say

no snowmelt drooled down the brae;

no human footfall swelled into that of a yeti

baring what it shoulda kept hidden;

no yellow ice choked bogbean;

there were no sheepskulls

in the midden –

it was no allotment, eden –

they had a hothouse,

an orangery, a mumbling monkey;

there was no cabbage-patch

of rich, roseate heads;

there was no innuendo

no sea, no snow

There was nothing funny

about a steaming bing of new manure.

There was nothing funny at all.

Black was not so sooty. No fishboat revolved redly

on an eyepopping sea.

Eve never sat up late drinking and crying.

Adam knew no-one who was dying.

That was yet to come, In The Beginning.


by Jen Hadfield