Himself Poem by Frank Avon

Adam and Eve
sit in the summer-house
in their little garden
reciting Paradise Lost,
naked before the fall

* * * * *

The one we know arrives
and survives
though what we recognize
now as triumph
resides in denial.

Naked Swedenborgians
('Now it is Allowable')
- indeed, all organised religion
gives way to Priestcraft
seemly the avoidance of Sin.

The ancestors he chooses
- Parcelsus & Behmen -
outsiders of other centuries:
God within oneself,
wheels of fire and the Abyss.

Wollstonecraft and Paine
- political radicalism,
classic rationalism -
even they cannot decipher
the likes of Isaiah.

So this is just a beginning
just as this is an end:
what he has lost
he has yet to lose.
'Our End is come'