Sonnet 1
I’m in the Garden thanks to you, dear Eve,
Who never lost your childhood link with earth;
And, if we’re wise, we shall not have to leave
As did our namesakes, who it’s said gave birth
To man’s fell quest for Godhead, which at last
Has reached the point when he his soul must mend
Or else he’ll God’s creation wholly blast
And thus deliver needlessly the End.
Though guiltless of the crime we’d surely be,
This fate with all the world we’d have to share:
Unless, that is, in time our holy plea
Upon mankind at large we bring to bear.
So in the Garden let us take a stand,
By falling not and trusting God’s own hand.
Sonnet 2
Now we’ve the Garden chosen to maintain
We should, dear Eve, be mindful of God’s Law,
So future generations might remain
Within this rightful realm forevermore.
We first must give the Lord out purest love
And for His works enrapt, astonished praise
Since, though inside us, He is yet above
Our own inventive minds and artful ways –
Which lead us, otherwise, to think we be
Ourselves the greatest power upon the earth,
And in our lust to prove we’re fully free
To desecrate her womb with blight and dearth.
To this great law of God we shall be true,
For we have seen what arrogance can do.
Sonnet 3
We’ve talked, dear Eve, about our need to praise
The Maker, whom we cannot comprehend,
And of man’s ego, which too often strays
Beyond its sphere and thus invites the End.
But there’s a trap more subtle than the rest,
Into whose darkness many people fall –
And these, indeed, appear the very bes
Since they for ego see no place at all:
They think that man, like God, can wholly love
And so on “Satan” they project their sin;
Meanwhile they wait for Christ, who’s “now above”,
New Heaven and Earth to kindly usher in.
In fact a fell apocalypse is due,
When we our own internal duel eschew.
Sonnet 4
When asked, my love, if I in fact deny
The Lord has power or will to intervene
In men’s affairs, I faithfully reply:
The Maker’s God indeed but, till He’s seen
The folk in question use their own free will
To choose through dialectic right, not wrong,
It seems He’d rather let them maim and kill
The good than send the Holy Ghost along.
For, save by freedom, how could they become
Not gods, as our Prometheans believe,
But certainly angelic and, in sum,
At home within the Garden, like my Eve?
And yet, when choice is spent or children pray,
How God reacts in truth I cannot say.
Sonnet 5
I’m sure, dear Eve, we humans ought to use
Our God-provided reason when we can,
As it may help us in our need to choose
Between the many options faced by man.
Although a few of these were brought about
By our own wilfulness and lack of sense,
When upright I have not the slightest doubt
It’s bad for us to sit upon the fence.
Unless towards integrity we strive –
And wholeness, note, embraces intellect –
We cannot claim to fully be alive:
We’re split apart if we a part neglect.
This said, there is a limit to the mind;
At which through faith alone we freedom find.
Sonnet 6
You say that intuition is your gift,
And with this claim I cannot but agree;
Your resolutions often are more swift
Than mine, and plucked from air appear to be.
Despite this difference, I would yet believe
Such inspirations rise from the same source:
An inner dialectic, gentle Eve –
Less conscious, yea, and lacking greed or force.
But lest you think I’m placing us beyond
The reach of God, this fact I surely know:
The sacred Self and Garden are the bond,
For here the seeds of Truth await to grow.
Thus, though the Lord insists we always toil,
Salvation He has planted in the soil.
Sonnet 7
For our own sake Almighty God demands
That every natural faculty we use;
That, rather than be forced by stone commands,
Through dialectic we should freely choose
Between the good and evil thoughts within
Without which choice itself could not exist;
That, far from sacred licences to sin,
We see our darker sides as psychic grist.
However, since the Garden’s man’s true place
And it contains its own God-given law,
Beyond the struggle with oneself there’s Grace:
A gardener knows the limits of this chore.
So while we honour freedom, dearest Eve,
Let’s also to our knowledge always cleave.
Sonnet 8
Without the Garden, dearest Eve, man’s lost
Within the labyrinth of endless choice;
And, though in theory free, he finds the cost
Includes reduction of his Maker’s voice –
Which for the gardener soughs in leafy trees,
Accompanies the birds in their sweet song,
Buzzes amusingly with wings of bees,
Pulsates in every heartbeat slow and strong.
But there’s another angle to this state
Of exile from the Garden that is home:
Removed from God and natural law, our fate
Becomes the toy of souls condemned to roam.
When limits are no longer in his sight,
Man thinks to play Creator is all right.
Sonnet 9
Although, dear Eve, it’s true that human wholeness
Unlike God’s own involves a synthesis
(In sum corporeality and “soulness”
Are normally at war: see Genesis);
And though His Garden and its laws comprise,
Despite their cycles which can temper time,
The tragic fact that every creature dies –
The foremost charge in all Promethean rime;
Without antitheses devised by God
We’d know not synchronicity nor love –
The fruits we taste, when on this path we’ve trod,
Which seem as if they’re sent from Him above.
In God’s good judgement, therefore, let us trust
And witness how the spirit leavens dust.
Sonnet 10
It seems, dear Eve, those Christians who declare
That “Antichrist” is due may be correct;
Yet of a major fact they’re unaware:
The Church itself created the effect,
When it rejected first this sacred earth –
In favour of another at “Time’s End” –
And then the flesh, per se, which must give birth
To souls the Lord for learning here would send.
In short, when spirit is considered all
Due to man’s craving for eternity,
In time antithesis will aptly call
For deathless genes, the body so to free.
If man is to avoid due nemesis,
He straight must choose the Garden synthesis.
Sonnet 11
Only within the Garden, his birth-place,
Can man, dear Eve, obey God’s natural law,
Be spared the wish to conquer time and space
And probe the gene to engineer its core –
Fell feats, indeed, resulting from the urge
To be divine in spirit and in flesh,
A hubris which the Lord is bound to purge
Before it can in full the soul enmesh;
For only in the Garden does the fear
Of death, that forces man without to do
Such foolish things to nature, disappear:
Though clay, he knows he could be angel too.
So why out there should he believe he’s greater
Than here, where he is creature and creator?
Sonnet 12
The Garden and its laws, dear Eve, comprise,
Thanks to their cycles which encompass time,
The perfect sphere for man in the Lord’s eyes,
Thus making “Adam’s Fall” the gravest crime.
Though by this term I mean potential state
(Not some fixed deed, committed in the past
By our first parents due to Satan’s hate,
Whose general curse till Doom is deemed to last),
Whoever spurns the Garden can’t but fall
Away from God and his own better side –
A fate that causes him at length to maul
His soul, the earth, and all to which he’s tied.
So let us stay within this sacred clime,
Where we can reap eternity in time.
Jerusalem
3 June 1999