Of Eden, or: Paradise Lost

Once rampant with color, its fragrance long gone,
the paint has dried into textured lines–
afternoons of melodic stillness now mourned–
decorative traces lost inside frozen time.

The paint has dried into textured lines,
ringed by the noise of questions unasked–
decorative traces lost inside frozen time
bleeding destruction we haven’t yet grasped,

Ringed by the noise of questions unasked
life is tenuous, scattered, emotions removed–
bleeding destruction we haven’t yet grasped,
as over and over we bandage the wounds.

Life is tenuous, scattered, emotions removed,
following roads that only disappear–
over and over we bandage the wounds–
the darkness rises, overwhelming with fear.

Following roads that only disappear,
like the garden once bursting with growth—
the darkness rises, overwhelming with fear–
sky is silent, empty, brittle as bones

We lived in a garden bursting with growth,
afternoons of melodic stillness, now mourned–
sky is silent now, empty, brittle as bones–
once rampant with color, its fragrance long gone.

I love pantoums, but I usually don’t rhyme them, so this proved challenging to me. It still could use some revision, but I need to let it sit for awhile. Punam asked for a pantoum on the theme of abandonment for her W3 prompt this week. I had also been thinking about Sherry’s prompt at earthweal, asking us to write about all the species vanishing around us. And Colleen’s prompt for Tanka Tuesday, a painting by Monet (below), had me thinking about what we’ve lost since Monet painted all his overflowing gardens at Giverny. Will we one day only know such beauty as a digital image?

I also started out with a lot of words from this week’s Random Word Generator, but some of them dropped out during revisions.

76 thoughts on “Of Eden, or: Paradise Lost”

  1. Beauty and a beast of a challenge, the rhyming pantoum. You make it look easy. Such a pretty top image and the flat-lined stitched paper makes a perfect contrast to it. Let’s hope that Joni’s prophesy doesn’t come to pass. Another one of her songs that comes to mind is when she sings, “Goodbye Blue Sky” in Roger Waters Live in Berlin.

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  4. The pantoum is my favourite form and I havent written one for too long. Wonderful, Kerfe. I love “bleeding destruction we haven’t yet grasped,as over and over we bandage the wounds.” So busy bandaging, we dont see the bigger threat coming down the pike. Love the empty sky, brittle as bones. Such a stunning phrase. Awesome work.

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  5. Some days you know, I could almost believe in fear.
    But, you know, what if we’re already in the garden?
    Did we ever really leave? Joni asked.

    But then, seeing only one, only black or only white
    just leaves us blind.

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    1. Indeed that’s true Neil. But we can easily lose what we have if we don’t take care of it. We’ve already lost so much–everything depends on all the other species in the ecosystem–so then you have a spiral that just picks up speed. If you don’t do something to stop it, you end up with nothing.

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  6. Kerfe, Jane had mentioned some time ago that you write absolutely beautiful pantoums and I couldn’t agree more. All the prompts came together so flawlessly for this. I love this so much. Too many beautiful lines to quote. Love the artwork too.

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  10. The repetition enhances and strengthens the sentiments offered and naturally adds a lovely flow. It’s a wonderful pairing – the art works and the words – great job with so many different aspects to consider.

    And speaking of AI and all that it “rips off” — you might be interested in this, as you’re an artist. It’s a free program developed by the University of Chicago for artists to use to stop AI from stealing and recreating “fakes” …. or mimicry.

    https://glaze.cs.uchicago.edu/

    (I read a news article about it – within the last few days – sorry, can’t remember if it was BBC or a Canadian space – anyhow – this is interesting, I thought.)

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    1. Thanks!
      And thanks for the link. I think that’s useful for people who make a living from their art. My art is not making me any money, nor any renown, so I feel no need to protect it in that way. I’m just putting it out there, and if people enjoy it, that’s a bonus. It’s not like I’m Matisse. As to mimicry, most people in every profession do that. I’m not that original, my work is built on others’ too.

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  13. It’s almost as if ‘they’ knew when they wrote the Bible that someday we were going to hark back to days that didn’t exist, when the earth was a garden. No a wild place that belonged to nature, but a garden that belonged to man. We’ve certainly lost it, and we’re following roads that lead into dead ends or cliff tops. The repeated lines have the effect of a hammer driving in a nail. I hope we wake up.

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    1. I hope so too Jane. The “real” garden, of course, is the earth as it was originally, as you say, wild, free of man’s attempts to make it bend to his will. Perhaps that Paradise is incompatible with humans.

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      1. It is, with the humans we have become. Look at our individual gardens, how difficult it is to get ordinary ‘gardeners’ to leave even a bit of their carefully controlled plot just a bit wild for the insects and wildlife.

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        1. Housing Associations have a fit if your yard and lawn is anything but “perfect”. Someone just wrote an article in a local paper about the Parks Department “cleaning up” the natural areas of the park, and how it impacted, especially, necessary insects. Why are they always raking up the leaves around the trees for instance?

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          1. There’s maybe too much ‘abundance’ in the US, an assumption that we can waste as much as we like, nature (or/and God) will provide. We have our own disastrous attitudes towards biodiversity, but possibly because we have fewer wild places, we’re more aware of what is being lost, and the environmentalist movement is very active.

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            1. There are pockets of real resistance here, but in general Americans still do not believe there’s a problem. Or they think they can solve it by buying a few electric cars for their family…

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              1. There are people with their eyes open everywhere, but often they’re the tiny minority because what they advocate as a solution isn’t what people want to hear. When Joe Biden says, the American way of life isn’t negotiable, the rest of the world hears, fuck you, losers.

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  14. Your pantoums are never less than natural; I don’t know how you do it. A chilling question to end this collective nightmare I hope we wake from, ready to act. Right now I’m getting hope from our city’s effort to involve the public in a massive waterfront development, two of whose proposals are very invested in conservation and education. One of which is the same designers who did the High Line in NYC. Fingers crossed.

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    1. Good luck! There are definitely positive things happening, and local is a good place to start. But without national policy and world cooperation from governments, the future looks dim.

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  24. I always enjoy your pantoums, Kerfe. And yes, it must be challenging to make them rhyme, but I like the subtlety in this, a necessity, I think, with the repeats. And a stunning message. Dark and beautifully crafted.

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