Longing For Eden Poem by gershon hepner

Longing For Eden



East River with four waterfalls
recalls four rivers which in Eden,
in the story where Man falls
determined to become a hedon,
encircled Havilah, of gold,
and all the Hamite land of Cush,
while Tigris and Euphrates rolled
towards Baghdad, before George Bush.
Fallen Man, now in Manhattan,
Edenic target of great terror,
may read in Hebrew, Greek or Latin
how in a late-lamented era,
like waterfalls, four eastern rivers
flowed purely through God’s Garden State,
until, like tricky Indian givers,
He took it back. Some still await
regifting of the watered garden
to those who are religiously
correct, and live until the pardon
in New York, most prestigiously.
Like mirages, waterfalls
create illusions of a space
one cannot reach, though it enthralls
those disenfranchised by disgrace.

Roberta Smith writes about the four waterfalls created by Olafur Eliasson to cascade into Walt Whitman’s beloved East River just off the coasts of Manhattan, Brooklyn and Governors Island (“Cascades, Sing the City Energetic, ” NYT, June 27,2008) :
Sometimes Mr. Eliasson’s falls are almost miragelike, especially after dark, when unobtrusive lighting makes them shimmer white against the muffled cityscape. It is at night that you have the greatest chance of hearing them from a distance, otherwise the rush of water is drowned out by the city. But their quiet heightens their strangeness, day or night. It is as if they were in their own movie, a silent one. And in a way they are. They could almost fool King Kong into thinking he is back home. They are the remnants of a primordial Eden, beautiful, uncanny signs of a natural nonurban past that the city never had.


6/27/08

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