If I lay down and became the earth,

and my breasts two Indian temples,

carved from red sandstone,

more beautiful than the Taj Mahal.

 

If Adam would walk between them,

when they were still new and unformed,

and truth lay in the sieve of my belly-button

like a limpid pool.

 

If it all started then, and the sun burnt

just the heat of my nipple,

and my mind could bend time,

like the fingers on my wrist,

and hold it till it ached.

 

If a brook struggled in my heart,

and my hands dug a well to let the water out,

and make the land green for Adam.

 

If gospels and new definitions

felt themselves all over my skin,

like the promises delivered,

by a cold morning shower.

 

If my tongue uttered a prayer, for the life

that once protested and walked upright,

but now lay calcified and fossilized,

trapped in the ball of my form,

like babies never to be born.

 

If Adam saw me, more than a speck of dust,

that shrivels before Jupiter’s path,

and I trapped in his eyes,

the eternity of the galaxies,

right there in the middle of his cornea,

where light played like liquid jade.

 

But the snake laughed at all this,

and climbed a tree,

without the wisdom of an arm or a leg,

and beneath a pile of leaves,

found an apple fit to be bitten.

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