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A Lesser Species - Part III
From a Partnership to a Dominator culture
Part I provided a brief discussion regarding the origin of the downfall of women. This issue will be described in greater detail, focusing on the digression of female status in society that will provide context necessary to understand the visual and verbal content of contemporary Pornography. I will also explain how the ongoing subordinate status of women contributes to the multiple crises facing the world today. In conclusion, I will offer suggestions for a new paradigm - one that leads to improved relations between men and women, a peaceful society, that may yet save our planet.
Due to the wealth of information, I was obliged to divide this essay into two parts. Pornography and the Conclusion therefore, will be covered in "A Lesser Species – Part IV"
Part I can be read here
Part II can be read here
Continue reading after the jump
If you are a male and you are sitting unaccompanied at your computer screen, then take a gander at the image on your right. This is the Venus of Willendorf. Stay focused on her for a while. Do you begin to feel a pleasurable engorgement of a certain part in your loin region? No? I didn’t think you would. Yet some archaeologists, whose genders were determined by the XY chromosome, insist that, despite ample evidence to the contrary, this image is pornographic. Such is the desperation of the dominant culture to prove, against credible and convincing data that indicate otherwise, that the current androcentric structure of society has always been and that it is normal, or, that ‘this is just the way things are’. As a result, it has been suggested that, in future, all archaeological interpretations be carried out jointly by men and women in order to arrive at a reasonable and fair conclusion. To make it even more interesting, lesbian archaeologists also wish to add their unique perspective to the mix. In “The archaeology of woman-woman bonds”, for example, Gabriele Meixner explains that physical bonds between women are as old as human history itself.
Nevertheless, the message imparted by Paleolithic art is that human’s first instinct was to worship a Goddess, as is evident from the statues and cave paintings that have been discovered over the ages. The most famous statue, Venus of Willendorf, represents one of many commonly referred to as the Venus figurines. In most of these statues, the abdomen, breasts, hips, thighs and vulvas are exaggerated while the arms and feet are absent. The heads are small and the faces show no detail. The age of the figurines covers a time span from 27,000 years ago, to 20,000 years ago. From a historical perspective the Venus figurines, and their off shoots, occupy a large expanse of time within human history. The idea of a fertility goddess or mother goddess is found through out most (if not all) cultures of the world.
The immovable art of the Paleolithic era consists of cave paintings some of which lie scattered over a large area of Europe and date back to more than 30.000 years ago. The ancient artists used flints to carve into the rock and utilized other techniques to create their images. For example, use of stump drawing in order to shade the inside of the bodies and provide relief. They also used the main two colors (red and black), fine and deep engraving, finger tracing and stenciling. There is no evidence to suggest that the artists were always male and that only adolescent boys entered the caves as this testosterone-biased archaeologist claims. Since children’s foot prints and hand imprints of very young children were also found it is more likely that the production of cave art was a family activity. In fact, caves were considered sacred sanctuaries judging from the images painted on the walls - it was sacred art, and woman's body and sex were a central motif of the sacred imagery which reflected the life-generating sexual power of women. The image of a vulva is repeated in many caves. Such vulval prehistoric images represent, it is thought, humankind’s first use of symbolism. They are also the oldest view of the vagina. And this primal perspective depicts female genitalia as a symbol of fertility, of the power of creation, of hope for the future, and of a belief that despite disease and death, new life will always come forth – from the female(V pg, 20). The pregnant female is similarly a recurring theme in Paleolithic art. In Cosquer, a painted cave near Marseilles, for example, one of the walls shows the posture of a woman that suggests she may be squatting in childbirth.
Awe and respect for nature’s life giving forces are also evident in how the artists depicted large animals. Geologist Norbert Aujoulat postulates that the triad of “horse-aurochs-stag” links the fertility cycles of important, and perhaps sacred or symbolic, animals to the cosmic cycles, suggesting a great metaphor about creation. Riane Eisler, the author of “Sacred Pleasure”, believes that images such as these would indicate that Paleolithic peoples recognized that both women’s and men’s sexuality played an important part in the great cyclic drama of birth, sex, death, and rebirth. A cave in the French Pyrenees, dating back to 20,000 B.C.E., has an image of a phallus inside a vagina that has a religious as well as a procreative association (Eisler, pg, 61). Also, the fact that many Paleolithic scenes show animals in female-male pairs in conjunction with young plants that reflect the birth of new life in the spring lends further support to Eisler’s assertion that Paleolithic society was aware of paternity. Nevertheless, the preponderance of images that express female sexuality as sacred indicates that the Paleolithic as well as the later Neolithic woman was revered and held in high regard. Furthermore, the absence of battle scenes, weapons, rape and bondage scenes of nude females as well as the nonexistence of depictions of any kind of violence also suggest that the Paleolithic and Neolithic societies consisted of a cooperative, or, using Eisler’s preferred term, a ‘partnership’ rather than a ‘dominator’ culture.
What emerges is an image of Paleolithic artists transmitting their techniques from generation to generation for twenty-five millennia with almost no innovation or revolt. A profound conservatism in art, Curtis notes, is one of the hallmarks of a “classical civilization.” For the conventions of cave painting to have endured four times as long as recorded history, the culture it served, he concludes, must have been “deeply satisfying”—and stable to a degree it is hard for modern humans to imagine. Source
Incidentally, stone carvings connecting the vulva with fecundity can also be found in other more modern societies in North and South America. Ethnographic evidence couples carvings by native Indians with human fertility rites and the concept of ‘Mother Nature’ (V pg, 43). Alas, foreign invaders (you know who they are) massacred most of their erstwhile peaceful societies and then proceeded to call themselves ‘civilized’.
Following are a few more revealing observations from Eisler about our ancient ancestors.
The people of the Paleolithic understood a great deal more than we might think about the biological processes involved in procreation as is supported by their extraordinary system of time-sequenced calculations. Most significantly these include a highly sophisticated lunar calendar with extensive notations on the many phases of the moon which also seem to have been related to women’s menstrual cycles.
There is a remarkable continuity of religious imagery from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic. Here too we find female figures representing the life-giving and sustaining powers of the universe. And here too we find the coupling of the female and male principles.
One of the most fascinating Neolithic works of art excavated at Catal Huyuk, Turkey is a carved relief of a woman and a man embracing and, next to them, the woman with a child in her arms. This may be one of the earliest representations of the hieros gamos, the ‘sacred marriage’. This frieze also represents something akin to what we might today call a lesson in sex education, demonstrating that our Neolithic ancestors understood the connection between sexual intercourse and birth (Eisler, pg, 62).
Incidentally, archaeologists assert that this 6000 year old farmhouse discovered in a Scottish field suggests that Neolithic people were engineers as skilled as our own.
From cave art and the numerous Venus figurines we can thus deduce that in prehistory the vagina was venerated, looked up as a symbol of fertility and a means of averting evil. The belief in the power of female genitalia is found in many cultures and mythologies (V pg, 5). Out of this awe evolved the practice of deliberately flashing the vagina which served a dual purpose – one was to promote fertility, the other was to ward off evil. Occasionally, it might also be used to create laughter in order to dispel a somber mood or static state. As strange as it may seem, the fairy tale of Snow White is suggested to have arisen from an ancient Italian ritual designed to enhance the fecundity of earth itself. A beautiful, noble girl would be sent down a mine which was running low in iron ore in order to expose Mother Earth to her vital female energy or essence (V, pg, 11). Conversely, in his essay “The Bravery of Women”, Roman historian Plutarch describes how Persian women averted a war by exposing their vulvas to the enemy who, as a result, retreated in haste. The historian Herodotus, on his travels to ancient Egypt, attended the Bubastis festival where he witnessed women playfully throwing their clothes over their heads. Women from the Kom and Bakweri tribes in West Cameroon still expose their vulvas today in response to derogatory remarks about female genitalia. It is possibly a quick and effective way of saying: “Respect, remember where you come from” (V, pg, 17). Finally, imagine having a festival in the current U.S. that included a joyful ‘clitoris dance’ to celebrate earth’s bounty as was a tradition in the ancient Marquesan harvest festivals. Evidently, our ancestors were capable of appreciating both aspects of female sexuality - procreation and pleasure. Unfortunately, their awareness of the clitoris is not matched by our society which, as author Joanna Briscoe explains, remains stunningly vaginally ill-informed.
Then there is a divine feminine image called Sheila-na-Gig, the Goddess of fertility in British-Celtic mythology - vulvas were carved on stone thresholds at sacred sites in her honor. Worshippers reverently touched the carving of her yawning vulva when entering the temple for worship( V, pg, 18). The Christian clerics must have fainted the first time their eyes fell on these.
The extensive reading I undertook for this essay has led to a revision of what triggered the downfall of women that I discussed in Part 1. If paternity was known to the Paleolithic and Neolithic peoples, and agriculture first began to be systematically used in the Neolithic era, it stands to reason that the transformation from a partnership to a dominator culture, that began approximately 4000 B.C.E., did not come about as a result of a sudden awareness of paternity and the discovery of agriculture. Indeed, the change did not originate within these civilizations as the theories of geologist James DeMeo and archaeologist Marija Gimbutas demonstrate. On the contrary, the uprooting of these peaceful societies occurred during a time of chaos caused by dramatic climate changes that led to massive migrations across the Eurasian continent. Already in the 1940s, the European prehistorian V. Gordon Childe remarked on the archaeological evidence of a dramatic prehistoric shift, which he termed “the Late Neolithic Crisis” (Eisler, pg, 88) that was later corroborated by geographer, DeMeo. It is during this period that the Indo-Europeans first appeared on the scene.
By far the most detailed documentation of this process is provided by Gimbutas, drawing from her own extensive excavations and the work of many other Indo-European specialists and archaeologists. Gimbutas calls the proto-Indo-European intruders Kurgans – she charts three waves of Kurgan incursions into Europe: the first wave at approximately 4300-4200 B.C.E., the second at approximately 3400-3200 B.C.E., and the third (and most devastating) at around 3000-2800 B.C.E. (Eisler, pg, 89).
Gimbutas’ Kurgan Theory challenges the doctrine of universal male dominance that has functioned as the origin story of Western civilization.
This article: “Inferring Prehistory from Language Genealogy”, discusses Gimbutas’ as well as two opposing theories and determines that The Gimbutas Theory fits the facts like a glove (scroll down to “In search of the Indo-Europeans”).
So who were these Kurgan people that overpowered our peaceful ancestors and created so much havoc? Reading this account of the Kurgan way of life and their belief system was bone-chilling. A central theme in the art of the Kurgans (as of later Indo-Europeans) was the deification of the power to dominate and destroy (Eisler, pg, 89-90). Not only did the Kurgans introduce violence but they brought with them the institution of slavery as well. The first humans to be enslaved were women, a practice that remains one of the hallmarks of our current, modern ‘civilized’ society.
Although Gimbutas does not speculate on the origin of the Kurgans it definitely was a question that occupied my mind. While DeMeo provided an answer, his interpretation of events still left me in a state of puzzlement. On the topic of dominator origins, DeMeo suggests that:
The primary focus for subsistence in most pastoralist economies is on domesticating animals from babyhood to adulthood in order to eventually kill them for food. This would also help explain the psychological armoring (or deadening of “soft” emotions) that characterized the origins of patrist or dominator societies (Eisler, pg, 96).
Add to this the fact that the system of nomadic pastoralism depletes the earth leading to arid and inhospitable environments that requires engaging neighboring herdsman in a battle for new land.
DeMeo further proposes that:
The making of patrist or dominator social institutions was the outcome of traumatic experiences and practices that evolved during severe climatic and environmental changes. Once established, these patterns of social and sexual organization were exported into more fertile regions ….. and he repeatedly brings out how the institutionalized distortion of human sexuality – particularly severe and cruel controls over female sexuality – have been primarily mechanisms for the maintenance of dominator societies (Eisler, pg, 93)
DeMeo believes there were actually two homelands from whence came the first known dominator or androcentric societies. The first is, in what is today the Arabian Desert; the second is very close to where Gimbutas places the Kurgan homeland in Eurasia (pg, 92).
It is in those areas that were rich in vegetation where the prehistoric, peaceful and egalitarian societies lived and thrived. But with the tragic turn of events, our ancestors where eventually conquered by the violent pastoralist Kurgans who, as Gimbutas notes, used domesticated horses as their vehicle of transportation to overrun Old Europe (Eisler, pg, 92). However, some managed to escape to caves and islands where they continued to live with their own traditions. One of these egalitarian civilizations inhabited the Greek island of Crete - these were the Minoans (more on the Minoans later). Others fled to Etruria across the Adriatic Sea from Greece. Peaceful egalitarian populations also existed on the islands of Melos and Samos that were eventually devastated by the Athenians which viewed them as a threat to their rule of the Mediterranean. The Celts, who came out of the Caucasus into Europe as early as 2000 B.C.E managed, despite their pastoral way of life, to maintain equality between men and women. I suspect that their brilliance in warfare originally grew out of the necessity to defend themselves against invaders. Ironically, the Romans eventually conquered the Celts by using weaponry designed by the Celts themselves. The only pre-Indo-European language to survive in Europe is Basque, supposed to descend from mesolithic (Solutrean) people – and with that a matrilineal society that lasted well into the middle ages. However, the high status of women and the issue of lingering pagan beliefs enraged the leaders of the Spanish Inquisition that led to one of its most savage witch-burnings in the Basque town of Logrono in 1610. I am not certain where the legendary army of female warriors, the Amazons, fit in. The origin of these warriors had always belonged to the realm of mythology until recent archaeological excavations discovered hard evidence of their existence in the Altai mountain range of Mongolia. The Scythians, a tribe to which the Amazons belonged, originated from this mountain region in Eurasia.
As is well known, no one on this earth, whether human or animal enjoys being dominated. The strict and cruel Sumerian and Babylonian laws that controlled women’s behavior therefore, offer compelling evidence that women, for a long time, have resisted their domination. It is the infliction of severe pain or the threat of severe pain in private and public that controlled women’s natural urge to be free in mind and spirit and to cherish their sexuality. During the slow but steady march towards a dominator society, occasional attempts to return to a partnership model failed. Nevertheless, for a considerable time, people held on to their old beliefs and myths of fertility goddesses until eventually, these goddesses were kidnapped by the dominator culture to be made wives and consorts of their male gods. Although a few powerful female deities remained, they were made subservient to Zeus. In addition, partnership myths were altered and new myths created to reflect women’s inferior status. In many myths and legends, an entire group of women called witches, are considered evil, dishonest, or dangerous. The power of myth indeed – invented and reinvented by powerful males and delivered to society to provide back up for their philosophy of the inferiority of women and to justify violence, in the private as well as in the public sphere.
But even in this dominator world, the old yearning for connection, for a harmonious union between woman and man, for a sense of the universe as cyclic and orderly rather than chaotic and violent – in short, for Eros rather than Thanatos – continues to struggle for reassertion in both myth and reality. Thus, in the “reformed” Dionysian myth – the myth of Orpheus – we also find remnants of the older world view in a conception of both masculinity and female-male relations that reaffirms Eros rather than Thanatos.
Social psychologist David Loye points out that Orpheus’s yearning for reconnection with Euridice is symbolic of man’s yearning for reconnection with woman in a society in which the loving sexual bonding between woman and man is considered a threat to the domination of man over woman (Eisler, pg, 140-141).
If the new and revised myths validated the dominator culture, the new religions were its lynchpin. The subordination of women was now by divine design and who could argue with God? Women were left to worship a woman whose sexuality was dead. Mary the Virgin may be holy but a goddess of love and sexuality she is not. The feminine principle was banished from the universe. Men would embark on journeys of Enlightenment and seek ‘wholeness’ while their feminine half was literally getting stoned to death. The sacred and pleasurable sexuality of our ancient ancestors was being replaced with sexuality synonymous with pain and suffering. The venerated vagina became a mere piece of cunt. The former strong, equal, and loving connection between men and women disappeared further and further into our distant memory until it was snuffed out altogether. Darwin, a gifted scientist, but a product of the dominator culture interpreted evolution in terms of competition. He failed to take into account the cooperative element of 30.000 years of human civilization that predated recorded history.
The religions generated by the dominator cultures have both dominator and partnership elements - the former enforces it while the latter maintains it. The religions are in effect faithful servants of the God of Hypocrisy – they were tailor-made for the dominator philosophy that utterly despised, strong, independent, sexual, and free-spirited women.
So at the same time that the Church continued to mouth Jesus’ message of peace and love, it could command the institution of the brutal Inquisition and Crusades. It could continue to preach that we are all “brothers” through Jesus Christ, and at the same time condone the virtual enslavement of women to their husbands, along with the enslavement of men by men and nation by nation.
It was the Christian Church’s hierarchy that declared, that “the locus par excellence of sin is sex,” that proclaimed woman a constant danger to man, and that enacted edict after edict to “protect” men from women’s sexuality through the most incredibly repressive and brutal means. It was the church that, as its ultimate “protection” of men from the ‘danger’ of women, launched the Christian witch-hunts - which left some towns almost without any female population, killed millions of women so accused, and deprived Western medicine of invaluable herbal and other healing knowledge that had until then been passed on by pagan priestesses and healers from generation to generation (Eisler, pg, 204-205).
The church pornographers’ appetite for inflicting pain on women is well demonstrated in the following church-commissioned religious ‘works of art’. Saint Barbara, a fifteenth-century painting by Master Francke hangs in the National museum of Finland. She is nude and tied to a post and you can see that her torturers are a burly executioner who beats the Saint with a knotted cord while another slices of her breast. Images of nude, bound women abound in religious art. Then there is this grotesque work of art called Inferno, painted in 1396 that can still be viewed in Gimigniano, Italy. A masked devil is shoving a sharp pole into a bound woman’s vagina.
One can almost imagine the cries of our ancient prehistoric ancestors. “What have you done to my sacred woman?” For the Paleolithic peoples, erotic rites would have been rituals of alignment with the life-giving female and male powers of the cosmos often represented in their art. So for them, partaking in the pleasures of sex would not have been sinful but, on the contrary, a way of coming closer to their Goddess (Eisler, pg, 57).
The RC church’s continued insensitivity to women and its willful blindness to women’s suffering was evident in the Pope’s recent absurd proclamation that the washing machine helped liberate women while completely ignoring the plight of millions of women enslaved worldwide specifically for the sexual gratification of men.
The Church’s constant association of sex not with pleasure but with eternal punishment and pain was not only a way of alienating men from women, and thus justifying and maintaining male dominance, it also served to alienate men from their own bodies, their own emotions, and above all, from their human need for loving connection (Eisler, pg, 205).
Buddhism is no less disdainful of women as it considers female sexuality as a corrupting force. Rather than defining sex as sin, sex is tied to the natural world, the world of suffering and ignorance. The activation of sexual desire is considered to be caused by women, and sexual relations are considered incompatible with religious attainments. (The Prostitution of Sexuality, pg, 182). Seeking Enlightenment is, of course, the prerogative of men only.
Men’s centuries’ long attempt to control women therefore, not only distorted female sexuality but also their own. In Greece, the so-called cradle of Western democracy, women were held in such great contempt that male homosexuality was promoted as a better alternative that thrived alongside sex with several classes of prostitutes. Although the homosexual relationship mimicked the dominant and subservient role – the manly man was powerful while the feminine role was always played by a slave. Athens was notorious for its lax attitudes regarding sexuality but ‘free love’ was only free for men. In fact, an adulterous wife could be thrown out of her house naked or be killed. Athens even had an official woman’s police, the gynaikonomoi, which served to restrict the movements of women in order to “protect their chastity.” (Eisler, pg, 106). Many Greek writers exhibited hysterical, pathological misogyny that was matched by its philosophers. Aristotle held that women were merely incomplete or maimed males – beings of a naturally inferior or not fully human order to be, again naturally, controlled by men. The practice of marrying girls off at a young age also served to maintain male control, as Socrates makes clear when he asks Ischomachus, “Didn’t you marry her as young as possible so that she would have been seen and heard as little as possible?” (Eisler, pg, 111).
Here again we witness resistance from women as there are indications that there may have been an underground of partnership revolt. A play like Aristophanes’ "Lysistrata" offers similarities to our contemporary feminist and women’s peace movements. But the most remarkable event was the breaking and mutilation of the phalluses of the Hermes in 415 BC (the statues guarding free men’s houses and public places all over Athens), that were a reflection of men’s admiration for and obsession with their penises (sounds familiar?). Although this ‘devastating’ (for men) crime was never solved, Eva C. Keuls, a professor of Classics, who challenges the idealized images of Athens, strongly suspects that the perpetrators of this symbolic act were the long-suffering women of Athens (Keuls, pg, 13).
The examples of Athens and the medieval holocaust of women deemed too independent offer but a glimpse into the extreme control of female behavior and sexuality that overtook the cultures that had been conquered by the Indo Europeans. The religions and myths were instrumental in brainwashing society into believing that women are ‘naturally’ inferior to men. Although the institutions it build had to inculcate the male defined (revised) nature of women through violence or the fear of violence and through shaming practices. The ancient sacred woman was transformed by force into a lesser species - an object that could be used and abused as men saw fit.
Let it be said that throughout history including today, there have been many men that have resisted the enforced dominator culture. Men that supported the free-spirited medieval women were also burnt at the stake. Furthermore, there exist many historical art images that portray women with dignity and respect.
Also, there are surviving fragments of poems idealizing rather than vilifying women and celebrating love between women and men. In fact, there is even in one late-fourth-century B.C.E. play a young man who expresses his remorse at having adopted a ‘dual standard’ in his sexual relations with his wife. So from both art and literature we have evidence that even in a society where laws and myths placed such formidable obstacles in the way of anything other than male dominance and female subservience, both women and men hungered for relations based on mutual respect and caring (Eisler, pg, 113-114).
However, those that resisted the dominator culture were greatly outnumbered by those that approved of it.
There are some who say that the dominator system is necessary to achieve an advanced and complex society. This is by far the most absurd and most illogical assertion I have ever heard. Not to belittle the truly great inventions of men but one cannot deny that we live in a world of violence, scarce natural resources, imminent food shortages etc., that can hardly be called great achievements. Instead of beating themselves on the chest with pride, men ought to ask themselves what kind of world we would live in today, if women had been able, throughout history, to contribute fully in all aspects of society. Let’s take a closer look at the Minoan culture (2700-1450 BC) on the island of Crete to determine what might have been.
Because Minoan society was so socially complex and technologically advanced, cultural historians call it a high civilization. What is extraordinary is how the Minoan system was egalitarian in all aspects – men and women were considered equal and there is a good deal of data indicating that life in Minoan towns was very different from that in most other civilizations of the time. There are here neither pyramids nor ziggurats towering over the much poorer dwellings of the “common people.” Most tellingly, Minoan towns display what scholars describe as a remarkably high general standard of living, with none of the sharp differences between haves and have-nots we have learned to associate with “advanced” civilizations (Eisler, pg, 79).
How many articles and comments on the Agonist have been devoted to analyzing our culture of entitlement and to agonizing over the stark inequities between our citizens? Is there not an inkling of a desire to be able to roll back the tape to the end of the Neolithic era and to start all over again knowing what we know now?
Another interesting anecdote about the Minoans is that one of their most popular sports was the highly dangerous practice of “bull leaping.” which involved jumping over a charging bull. Interestingly, cheerleading was not part of the Minoan women’s repertoire as they were too busy leaping over the bulls themselves. And to top it off, the sports outfit of both men and women consisted of a loin cloth. What a sight that must have been.
The Minoan culture clearly shows us that equality is a value that is crucial if one wants to achieve and maintain a peaceful and well-functioning society. Sadly, the Minoan civilization was weakened by severe earthquakes and was eventually crushed by the dominators of Greece, the Myceneans.
In the opening paragraph I insinuated that the ongoing inferior status of women is the root cause of all violence. In other words, the continued subordination of women is the fire that heats the cauldron of all violence. What this means is that the tears shed for Omar Khadr are wasted, that the outrage over greedy bankers is wasted, that the disgust over U.S. involvement in torture is wasted if there is no parallel discussion taking place about ways to eliminate the inequality between men and women. Because gender inequality produces families that breed an unending supply of warmongers, fraudsters, rapists, torturers that are required for the Guantanamo Bays of the future, the wars of the future, and new elitist authoritarians to rule over the sheeple. Violent or fraudulent power of a few over many begins with controlling women. The new severe restrictions on women that are imposed by the Taliban are one example - see the new law in Afghanistan and the Shari law in the Swat region of Pakistan. And let us not forget the renewed pressure by the Christian Right to make abortion illegal and the demand by some to legalize polygamy. What we are witnessing is a severe dominator pushback.
The other more devastating scenario, now that nuclear technology is in the hands of many, is that our planet blows up first. However, that might not be such a bad thing considering the abject misery endured by billions of people worldwide. I will discuss this and how the current pornographic images of women perpetuate inequality in greater detail in the fourth installment. But for now, let’s kidnap the story of Adam and Eve and give it a different ending.
You’re safe, he murmured, cradling her.
No, it was terrible, she said, I cannot sleep.
I still see that glorious garden, the birds,
the fruits, the clear streams with pebbles of
agate and the trancelike wandering of green fish,
and you were there, and for a time it was good,
but then this terrifying old man came and told me
I must not think for myself. And soon a snake
came and said – He laughed. A talking snake!
Don’t laugh, please don’t laugh! She shuddered.
This was so real, more real than now, much more.
The snake offered me a brain and mind and when
I took them the old man came rushing in, his eyes
exploding, his mouth aghast, and cursing with
hurricane force he threw us from the garden.
And you blamed me, she cried, and in a world
of misery we fought for five thousand years.
her hair: he touched the gold along her neck
and back and sighing she rolled over and for
a long time they held each other, then she rose.
Come see she called joyous beside the window.
In poured the full glory of the morning, the
copper-gold of sky, the far-off crowing, the
clear, muted laughter along the river, the
light, cool fragrance in from the fields.
It will be a good day, he said, smiling.
And night, she said. For years, they
both thought. For years and years.
