Poem: "Living Outside Eden (After Eliot)"

I.

Between empathy
And antipathy
Lies the pathway.

Between us and them
Rises the wall.
Come along my friend

And we shall take the fall
For humankind.
Living outside Eden

Is its own kind of reward.
To refuse to be cast
In only one direction,

To be emphatic but
Not fanatic, such
Is the charge before us.


II.

In the mind of every killer
Lives one who imagines
Their cause to be just.

Between one eye
And the other eye is
The place of clear vision,

The still point where
Understanding resides
And duality, reconciled.

Where being oneself
Is the beginning and end,
Though it’s hard to tell

These poles apart. So
Join me my friend, as we
Reap exactly what we sow. 

M. Bogen
December 2024