april is poetry month!

i know, i know -- i'm late. oh well.

my intention is to post a favourite poem each day. i hope you will enjoy them as well.

first up - derek walcott's adam's song:

The adulteress stoned to death,

is killed in our own time

by whispers, by the breath

that films her flesh with slime.

The first was Eve,

who horned God for the serpent,

for Adam's sake; which makes

everyone guilty or Eve innocent.

Nothing has changed

for men still sing the song that Adam sang

against the world he lost to vipers,

the song to Eve

against his own damnation;

he sang it in the evening of the world

with the lights coming on in the eyes

of panthers in the peaceable kingdom

and his death coming out of the trees,

he sings it, frightened

of the jealousy of God and at the price

of his own death.

The song ascends to God, who wipes his eyes:

'Heart, you are in my heart as the bird rises,

heart, you are in my heart while the sun sleeps,

heart, you lie still in me as the dew is,

you weep within me, as the rain weeps.'