How did it happen? How did a rosy
Nipple, an infant’s source of nourishment,
Become obscene, affront the dignity
Of decent folks demanding punishment?
That satanic snake feeds the “mortal fruit”
To Eve, who shares with Adam—then the fuss
Begins! And, abashed, Adam hides his glutes
From god, as if the sight of his pale tush
Contaminates divinity. “All right!”
God shouts, “If hidden genitalia
Is all you care about—out of my sight—
Leave the garden! Adopt regalia!
Thus Satan wins the day, makes god his foil—
While man, discretely clad, confronts his toil.
10/25/05
The snake you will, of course, remember from Genesis 3:1-5. As for “satanic,” well the book says only that “the serpent was more subtle than any other wild creature.” Actually, the unmistakable Satan (called by name) doesn’t enter upon the stage until much later—but for centuries, folks, finding the subtle serpent’s behavior inexplicable, have been assuming that Satan was there—lurking—why else would a simple (however subtle) snake cause such catastrophic mischief? The mortal fruit (words stolen from John Milton’s Paradise Lost), surely not an apple, not in sub-tropical Eden, is the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (perhaps a pomegranate). It is, finally, not knowledge, information, that doomed us, but knowing the difference between good and evil. Go figure!