Posts Tagged: poems about Eve
from Broken Waters by Amy Bornman
EVE
of every woman I am first. imagine
me falling off a cliff. imagine me drowning
in the tide. my belly growing big, for what?
no one can tell me what’s going on.
nausea I don’t understand, weeping for
hormones with no name. prayer with
no answer, when before I looked up
and everything was there. desert
instead of garden, a green twig bending,
bending, never snapping, and I am in
labor forever. no midwife, no mother,
no sister, no friend. I say goodbye to everything
because I’m sure that I will die. this is mine
alone. I remember the curse, it made no sense.
no knowledge could prepare me for this.
it is not pain, it’s the end of the world. I walk
through it, screaming, to find somewhere new.
—Amy Bornman, Broken Waters (Fernwood Press 2024)
A friend sent me this poem today with the note, “Mostly I like this recognition that Eve would suffer from having no other woman to ask for information and support.” What a terrifying thought.
I like the lines,
“I remember the curse, it made no sense.
no knowledge could prepare me for this.”
Because all my own weeks of prepared childbirth classes could barely scratch the surface of what it was like to give birth for the first time. I went into it holding tight to what I thought I knew. I knew nothing. I was absolutely in for it. What a ride.
I have it all written down in a notebook I gave to my oldest daughter. I could borrow it back, the only journal I’ve ever kept successfully (surprise! a writer who doesn’t journal) but that’s okay. It’s enough to say that when it comes to giving birth for the first time, we are all Eve.
This poem does a beautiful job of capturing that.
“The Story as I Understand It” by Leonora Speyer
I think that Eve first told the callow Tree of apples,
And taught the adolescent Serpent how to hiss
Its first wise word.
I think the Angel with the Flaming Sword
Followed her with hot holy eyes,
Remembering the red curve of her kiss
As she passed out of Paradise.
See, how the apple-boughs are twisted in their pain,
Weighed down with many a red-cheeked little Cain,
And how the serpent writhes away
From man to this far day.
An angel is a lovely lonely thing
Of boundless wing.
They are the banished ones that grieve;
Not Eve!
Not Eve, her body quick with coming pride,
Nor Adam walking there at her white side—
A little heavily perhaps,
Because of things scarce known,
As yet not named:
New tenderness for Eve, but not for Eve alone,
Fears not yet fears—
And out beyond, the world untamed
Of which to make
Their surer paradise of tears!
But in the Garden is a hallowed emptiness
Of laws, forgotten now,
Concerning fruit and flowers,
That none shall ever bless
Or break;
And in the Garden is the one plucked Bough
That blossoms whimpering
Through a divine monotony
Of Spring on spring.
This poem is in the public domain. I thought this poem was so beautiful and oddly contemporary, considering it was published in 1926. I’m putting it here so I always have it.