Arcadia Lost

A little poem I wrote about where we've come from and where we're going.

Woods and streams bending limbs to shepherd-kings,
the nourishing fruit of the vine.
There, order would be birthed and the patterns of things,
so ungoverned and sublime.

So long ago The Garden lost, a vision stillborn in the soil.
And how unreachable this harmony, to which we recall and toil.
Strenuous lives we now suffer, to one day gain respite from labours.
But we fail to define our loss and forget how to live amongst neighbours.

How is it that a turtle hatchling can know the way to the pond?
Or that a trout, once grown, finds the bed on which it was spawned?
Our sense to sustain our kind must go beyond shepherd and pasture.
It is a common memory we all share of harmony once with nature.

However, a locust swarm has no commander, it lives in such anarchy.
Its clumsy assault consumes all the land gives, 
it leaves only havoc and trouble.
Yet a hive of bumble bees will bend their knee to higher authority,
and brings forth good bounty while it lives,
yielding many times its double.

What can we say? That a being’s worth is in its contribution?
Nay, history has shown that to be the road to perdition!
What hope do we have to return to The Garden if we cannot accept The Pruner?
For ordained dominion keeps us from becoming a plague without order.

Aye! Perhaps in that riddle the key may abide, to unlock the door, long lost.
For lost innocence must first reconcile with our knowledge and its dreadful cost.
This idyllic can only be gained prostrate before The Maker.
For the Edenic mandate was established by a giver, not by a taker.

It was pride which sought to rewrite the natural order,
breaking our fellowship with creation.
And so, for now, a worldly government we’re under,
until that Future City and Celestial Nation.

Painting is “The Course of Empire: The Arcadian or Pastoral State” by Thomas Cole, 1834

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