By Katha Pollitt
Adam was happy -- now he had someone to blame
for everything: shipwrecks, Troy,
the gray face in the mirror.
Eve was happy -- now he would always need her.
She walked on boldly, swaying her beautiful hips.
The serpent admired his emerald coat,
the Angel burst into flames
(he'd never approved of them, and he was right).
Even God was secretly pleased: Let
History begin!
The dog had no regrets, trotting by Adam's side
self-importantly, glad to be rid
of the lion, the toad, the basilisk, the white-footed mouse,
who were also happy and forgot their names immediately.
Only the Tree of Knowledge stood forlorn,
its small hard bitter crab apples
glinting high up, in a twilight of black leaves.
How pleasant it had been, how unexpected
to have been, however briefly,
the center of attention.
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"The Garden of Eden -- a nice place to visit, perhaps, but would you have wanted to live there? Wouldn't it have been a little boring?" writes Pollitt in this week's Poet's Choice. "In my poem, everyone is glad to be rid of Paradise, so timeless and static and perfect. Now, Adam and Eve will get to have complex, difficult relations full of blame and seduction, like real men and women; the animals will be real animals, alien beings in nature, not our toys and servants; and God, who exists outside of time, will enjoy himself watching human beings spin out their endless tragicomic story...will they mess it up? Probably." The poem is from The Mind-Body Problem, coming out this month.
We had a bunch of chores to get done on Saturday before we leave town next week -- going to World Market to get some food for the trip, going to Petco to get cat litter, going to CVS to get drugstore necessities...nothing all that exciting, in other words, other than following the protests in Iran. Here are some photos of the animals who enlivened our chores:
We often have rabbits in the neighborhood, but this is the first one we've ever seen in the bushes right at our intersection.
I took this photo out a car window, but the rabbit seems fairly unafraid of people -- I just hope the ones with dogs keep them on leashes like they're supposed to.
We always stop to look at the animals at Petco when we go to get cat litter. Fortunately the SPCA was not there with kittens today (that's how we got Cinnamon and Daisy.) Sorry for the low-quality pics, I only had my phone with me.
The mice are adorable -- I love how there always seem to be several on the wheel at once, riding upside-down -- but we are not silly enough to try to bring one into the house, given how the aforementioned Cinnamon and Daisy will attack the glass sliding doors just to try to get at the ones that live on our deck.
Unlike the other two, Rosie is much too
It is much less work for all three cats to sit on or near the kitchen table and try to use their psychic cat-mon powers on us to get us to feed them.
In the evening we watched Interview with the Vampire, which I am embarrassed to admit that I never saw all the way through...I was with Anne Rice, I thought her original dream cast of Sting and Daniel Day-Lewis, or at least Gabriel Byrne and Julian Sands, should have played Louis and Lestat, and I couldn't imagine liking Tom Cruise in anything. I must confess that either time has mellowed me or Twilight has lowered my standards. Because the movie was worth watching to me from the moment very early on when Lestat, flying above the tall ship, bites Louis's pretty, pretty throat. This is so much hotter than Carlisle biting Edward that comparisons are silly, and I thought Carlisle biting Edward was the hottest scene in that movie.
Cruise couldn't act any better then than he can now (which is to say, the perpetually depressed Louis has more emotional range than the ostensibly fiery Lestat), but it's really quite fun to watch 11-year-old Kirsten Dunst acting circles around him. And Antonio ohhhyes Banderas mmmmm! As Brad says when he almost kisses him before storming away in a very pretty huff, "You are dead, and you want me to quicken you once more." Woohoo but I'd have liked to watch that! *coughs* My point being, there are lots of attractive young men swearing eternal passion and stuff, and given that Anne Rice's idea of a powerful female character is one who wants to kill 90 percent of the men in the world (QOTD), it's just as well that the only woman of note here is a perpetual child.
Have a blessed solstice and a happy Father's Day if you are celebrating either! Otherwise, have a nice Sunday!
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