The Story as I Understand It

I think that Eve first told the callow Tree of apples, 
And taught the adolescent Serpent how to hiss 
Its first wise word. 
I think the Angel with the Flaming Sword 
Followed her with hot holy eyes, 
Remembering the red curve of her kiss 
As she passed out of Paradise.

See, how the apple-boughs are twisted in their pain, 
Weighed down with many a red-cheeked little Cain, 
And how the serpent writhes away 
From man to this far day. 
An angel is a lovely lonely thing 
Of boundless wing. 
They are the banished ones that grieve;
Not Eve!

Not Eve, her body quick with coming pride, 
Nor Adam walking there at her white side—
A little heavily perhaps, 
Because of things scarce known, 
As yet not named:
New tenderness for Eve, but not for Eve alone, 
Fears not yet fears—
And out beyond, the world untamed 
Of which to make 
Their surer paradise of tears!

But in the Garden is a hallowed emptiness 
Of laws, forgotten now, 
Concerning fruit and flowers,
That none shall ever bless 
Or break;
And in the Garden is the one plucked Bough
That blossoms whimpering 
Through a divine monotony
Of Spring on spring.

Credit

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on March 2, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.

About this Poem

“The Story as I Understand It” appears in Leonora Speyer’s poetry collection Fiddler’s Farewell (Alfred A. Knopf, 1926). In the chapter “When Performance Ends: Musicians as Writers” from Literature and Musical Adaptation (Brill, 2002), professor of English Michael J. Meyer wrote: “Within the creative ferment of the early twentieth century, music doubled as potent metaphor and incomparable, often highly experimental, form. […] Harriet Monroe advocated the closer collaboration of composers and poets. Dorothy Morang turned from a performing career as a concert pianist to a painting career as one of the New Mexico crowd working out the new school of Transcendental painting. Leonora Speyer, winner of the 1927 Pulitzer prize for poetry and a concert violinist long before that, summed up the hope for her contemporaries: ‘Music and poetry are so alike, really, the same glory of rhythm, of color, of sounds, notes and words clear-ringing, and above all the same dizzy heights of creation and vision.’”