Lawrence Raab: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

Lawrence Raab   web

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Original Sin

 

That was one idea my mother

always disliked. She preferred her god

to be reasonable, like Emerson or Thoreau

without their stranger moments.

Even the Old Testament God’s sudden

angers and twisted ways of getting

what he wanted she could accept

as metaphor. But original sin

was different. Plus no one agreed

if it was personal, meaning

all Adam’s fault, or else some kind

of temporary absence of the holy,

which was Adam’s fault as well.

In any case, it made no sense

that we’d need to be saved before

we’d even had the chance

to be wrong. Yes, eventually everyone

falls into error, but when my sister and I

were babies she could see we were perfect,

as we opened our eyes and gazed up at her

with what she took for granted as love,

long before either of us knew the word

and what damage it could cause.

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Lawrence Raab is the author of ten books of poems, including Mistaking Each Other for Ghosts (Tupelo, 2015), which was longlisted for the National Book Award and named one of the Ten Best Poetry Books of 2015 by The New York Times, and What We Don’t Know About Each Other (Penguin, 1993), a winner of the National Poetry Series and a finalist for the National Book Award. His latest collection is April at the Ruins (Tupelo, 2022).

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Lucas Cranach the Elder  Detail of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden  1530  Oil on Panel  Kunsthistorisches Museum  Vienna  Austria

           Lucas Cranach the Elder, Detail of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, 1530, Oil on Panel, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria

                                                                

       

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Author: Terence Winch