Beckett: Poetry – No. 2139, Genesis: Creation & The Fall

The Lord existed before time
when once there was no single thing
except the Lord in the meantime,
then He created everything.
He created day and nighttime,
the moon and every star shining.
He made each creature in their prime,
all creation simply stunning.

He made not from necessity
but simply out of His pleasure.
He created man specially
to be His most precious treasure.
In the image of His glory,
He created man as stewards.
Everything was good and dandy
as God and man lived together.

God created in but six days,
and the seventh made for our rest.
All was good until it was raised
the clever serpent’s sly address.
A certain tree God banned always,
not to put man to faithful test
but to trust alone in His ways
and to remain forever blessed.

This tree was of good and evil;
both man and woman moved to eat.
The serpent deceived her feeble
while the man too enjoyed the treat.
The fruit became Earth’s upheaval;
death and evil entered concrete.
To God man craved to be equal;
instead, from God they drove to flee.

They heard the sound of God walking;
in terror they settled to hide.
From the midst they heard God calling
in order to call out their pride.
With much blame in their answering,
from now on they’d face God’s backside.
Yet after all their daft blaming,
with God’s wrath they did not collide.

God cursed the snake on its belly
for all the days of its grim life.
And neither would he be merry, —
with the woman’s seed in firm strife.
Child labour painful and sweaty,
strife with men to always be rife,
men’s work also hard and sweaty
since o’er God he obeyed his wife.

Instead of death as they deserve,
God kills a beast to give them clothes.
He expels them out of concern
they’d live forever in sin’s throes.
From the Garden man has dispersed,
wanting nothing but God deposed.
Let it be known God’s great reserve
to save man from what he now knows.

For through this story keep in mind
God’s mention of the woman’s seed.
While Earth keeps falling from design,
God promised to never concede.
Though to this Seed many are blind,
from Eve’s line Mary will conceive
the Seed to end evil inclined,
for to God’s will He but accedes.