LIFE ACCORDING TO ADAN

The first winter after leaving Paradise, Adam fell ill,
And, alarmed by his symptoms: coughing, fever, headache,
He burst into tears, just as Mary Magdalene would many years later.
Then, addressing Eve, he cried: "I don't know what's wrong with me.
Come here, my love, I fear the hour of my death is near".
Eve was very surprised to hear the words love, fear and death,
they seemed to belong to a strange language, quite unlike the language of Paradise,
And she rolled them around in her mouth, chewing on them like tomato seeds or roots,
Until she felt she had understood them fully: love, fear, death,
But by then, Adam had recovered and was happy again —well— almost.
That extra-paradisaic event was only the first in a long series,
And Adam and Eve continued their intensive course in that language
which spoke of love, fear and death, learning words such as
Drudgery, sweat, delight, dagger, perish, song, caress and prison;
As their vocabulary increased, so did the wrinkles on their skin.
The hour of Adam's death, the real one this time, came when Adam was very old,
And he wanted to tell Eve all that he had learned, his ultimate truth.
You know, Eve, he said, "losing Paradise wasn't really such a bad thing.
Despite all the hard work, the business with poor Abel and other such problems,
We have experienced the only thing that deserves the noble name of life".
On Adam's tomb a few ordinary saltwater tears were shed,
And where they fell to earth no hyacinths or roses or flowers of any sort sprang up,
And paradoxically enough, it was Cain who cried the most.
Then Eve recalled fondly how frightened Adam had been by that first bout of flu,
And they all stopped crying and went off for a drink and a bite to eat.