Adam and Eve, Albrecht Durer, oil on panel, 1507, (click image for source and more)
Dürer’s Eve
The consequences follow from here:
the shine of forbidden knowing
the apple soon offered to Adam
the twined Serpent’s hidden fangs
the omniscient God off elsewhere
the enjoined tree gravid with fruit
the sun’s half-light off reddish-brown hair
the flawless radiant skin
the inviting pursed red lips
the apple’s crisp ripe roundness
the knowing unavoidably to come
the pain knowledge will never satisfy
the pose of Eve’s determination
the sinister temptation in her left hand
the arresting essential iconography
the coming expulsion to mortality
the art’s suspended eternal pause
the gentle innocence of her eyes
the dark shadowed forest behind her
the world becoming musky with death
the Divine scheme’s fixity
the what-might-have-been
the Godhead’s complex rebus
the bitten apple later fallen to earth.
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Ed Higgins