Anomy: An Epic Poem in Three Parts

What follows is Part I of my attempt to write an epic poem in the style of John Milton. The title, "Anomy," means a violation of divine law. The plot follows an attempt to re-enter the Garden of Eden and eat the fruit of the tree of life, the counterpart to the more-famous tree of knowledge, which imparts immortality instead of wisdom to its consumer.

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There are two trees in the middle of Eden
Whose fruits God forbade Adam from eating
A serpent tempted Eve to feast on the forbidden
So as to gain the knowledge of good and evil
And paradise’s perpetual calm saw an upheaval
Adam and Eve were expelled; Eden was hidden.

The Lord and his angels had much to discuss,
“Behold, man has now become like one of us,
He must not be allowed to reach out his hand
and take also from the tree of life and live forever.”
So man walked the earth and survived by endeavor;
From his ancestral homeland eternally banned.

The tree of life still stands in that land,
Immortality awaits to be plucked by our hand.

The providence of God, foolish tongues address:
Complaining for suffering Adam to transgress.
When God gave him reason, he gave him freedom to choose
Else he’d been an artificial Adam as he is in the motions
God gave us the faculties that birthed his rogue notions
Are we to believe his gift we were supposed to refuse?

I suspect the Lord always intended that man
Would complete the meal that Adam began;
Why else create such a fruit to tease us at all?
Tomorrow we will run faster, stretch our arms farther
Is that not why we’re here? And if not, why bother?
Our fine morning beckons and I will answer its call.

God’s command to Adam had only one pardon:
“You are free to eat from any tree in the garden
but you must not eat from the tree of knowledge,
for when you eat of it you will surely die.”
No ban on the second fruit did apply;
The tree of life wasn’t even acknowledged.

My appetite is as innocent as his
Who would have gladly fed on figs
Between Jerusalem and Bethany.
If I taste the fruit, I’ll be blameless;
Since God commanded only the angels,
Man owes him no further responsibility.

Yet I doubt divine covenants contain loopholes;
A bite of the apple would surely cost me my scruples.

One bite branded man with original sin
And now we are in blood so stepp’d in
Should we wade no more
Returning would be as tedious as go o’er;
To raise our race I alone will stoop lower
And see us to the opposite shore.

God knew our fall would inevitably happen;
He put the tree in the garden inches from Adam.
Now we toil all our days just to die anyway;
God has made us survive by the sweat of brow
But that covenant is over, his rules disavowed.
When immortality could be ours, why shy away?

So I fix my gaze upon the object of man’s fall
I am to set an Anomy, and invite disorder over all

So call me vile for ambition I share with the devil
We both gazed up at God and wished to be at eye level
But the end will be different to Genesis’ sequel
We will not flee the Lord but greet him as equal

We are but strangers and pilgrims on earth
From a better country of heavenly worth
Too long we’ve been without our pleasure dome
So I look to the future with a backward glance
To return to the garden where it all began
Our penance is over; it’s time to go home.

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This section of the poem is loaded with literary references and direct quotes from the Bible. The Biblical quotes are typically marked by quotation marks and easy to spot, however much of the mythos surrounding the tree of life comes from secondary sources like the Dead Sea scrolls. Among the literary references are full lines taken from Shakespeare's Macbeth, F. Scott Fitzgerald's the Great Gastby and John Milton's Areopagitica. There's even a Jay-Z line in there, for the astute reader and student of hip-hop.

Click here to view Anomy: Part II | Click here to view Anomy: Part III