Barbara Dordi
Eden Revisited
After Gauguin’s Tahitian Pastoral with Preparations for a Festival
Come, pick your way through this frieze with me,
tread softly through the calm.
My arms around you, bending to miss
branches snaking skyward, our bodies blend,
the only thing between us, this thin cloth
under my thighs, your broad back beneath me.
Rapt, we glide through copper mists,
weaving the slalom of sap-green trees
beneath canopy of mango and paw-paw.
No thorns for tawny harvesters,
a century gathering, their perfect ease
unaltered by our ride through time
This man with gleaming buttocks, tends
the garden, impassive; but this long-haired beauty –
pareo scant above ample thighs –
one hand on belly, the other held
between peachlike breasts, as if in prayer,
casts us a curious glance.
How muffled your hooves through panoply
of melon and guava – luscious pinks
and yellows – legend of tropical light,
Eve naked before us for all time.
Does she feel the tremors, now,
her garden at the nuclear altar?
Page(s) 49
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