1. Myself
They named me Tree of Knowledge.
I did not name myself. I did not
choose the place in which I grew,
I just awoke, out of the soil
when the earth was still dark
and sacred and new.
I reached toward the light
and the light grew along with me
swelling in the sky above my leaves,
where blue changed to gold to white
to silver with the passing of the hours.
And soon there grew around me
companions: plants of many size
and colors, animals the flew and swum
and crawled and built their homes
in my strengthening branches.
I saw the world expand around my
very roots as they nosed into the soil
and spread beneath the hills and valleys of the
garden, and so I felt, I think,
that it was my garden.
I saw the man and woman who emerged from
the stream flowing between a dip in the hills,
and my roots stretched all the way to where
they stood when they were cautioned not to eat
the fruit that grows, even now, on my
outstretched, waiting, laden branches.
I remember hearing this warning, their voices travelling
through the earth and under my bark, and
I felt the weight of the fruit swelling on my limbs,
ready to drop but never falling, and I wondered
what was under its skin, what poison it held
and how that poison must come from me;
a poison with the power to kill, and yet I lived
and all around me there was nothing but life, and life.
I felt the deep warm flow of sap through my veins,
and I thought how strange it was that nobody
had told me about the poison running in them, too.
The fruit on my branches glowed the colors
of the sunset, shimmered in the heat of the afternoon,
swung dew-jeweled in the morning, ever ripe,
and I waited, praying that no creature would
crawl up my trunk, perch on my branch, pluck a fruit—
would it hurt?—and eat. I sickened to imagine,
I dreaded, waited, hoped.
2. The Snake
Gliding, running, through the grass,
mixing with the noonday sunlight,
I see the snake, and against my will
my roots constrict, curling in
to clench the cold depth of the earth.
My branches shiver, rustle, quake.
The snake is the color of slightly burned grass,
his eyes prickle, engorged with light, and when
he stops to catch his breath his tongue winks
in and out of his tiny mouth and in a blink
he is moving again, a splash of sun,
a ribbon winding round the grass stems
and then, at once, I recognize him as
the intruder, shapeshifter, the one
who whispered in Eve’s sleeping ear.
Of course it is him. All the other
beasts in Eden have stayed away,
and even I have learned to fear
the poison sleeping in my fruits.
But before I know it the snake seizes me,
soft at first, a streamer tied round my middle,
but then he lifts, clenching the bark,
scales splitting my sides as he rises,
reaches, tongue outstretched to snatch
a fruit. He eats without plucking it,
the rosy sides burst like hot bubbles
and red, gold, mint green juice splits
the air like music, stings like a wasp
where it spills down my trunk.
I am afraid. And in my fear, I
come to know something: my fruit
is not the poison to be feared.
It is the violence of those that would
disobey their creator and attack a tree
in order to satisfy themselves and seize it.
And more fearsome still is the one, the snake,
who would deceive others so that
they do the same.
3. Eve
He brings her when he returns, and I knew
he would. She approaches, sure-footed and
smiling, wading through the grass behind the
flick of his tail. I watch her, see the smile
shatter when she sees me, the confusion
blur her eyes. I watch her, and listen
to my leaves catching wind, rattling their
alarm. Eve’s wide eyes take in the green,
scale my trunk, but catch on the fruit.
She turns to leave, but the snake is too quick,
his tail whips around her ankle, and he
begins to speak. I cannot hear him, the wind
shaking my leaves is too loud, the sap
pumping in my trunk too thunderous,
I refuse to listen, because in listening
I am allowing him to speak. But Eve
frowns as she takes in what he says, her
hair lifting in the currents of air about her
face, her hands curling into knots at her
sides, her smile reappears in flashes, lost
its warmth, and I see the snake-tail still
wrapped around her ankle, and a pain
tears open in my depths, like a fruit inside
has broken and bled, and I feel the ache
take each of my branches, take possession of my
roots, and soon it is the soil trembling too,
and the sky bends over in anguish, bowled
over grey-faced toward the garden, and the birds
take wing in frenzied chorus and all the
garden watches the serpent, who
watches Eve reach out to me.
Reflection
Although it was challenging and at times frustrating, I am truly grateful for the opportunity to have read Paradise Lost this semester. The themes of religion, free will, and what constitutes good and evil are endlessly fascinating and provoked questions and class discussions that have remained fresh in my mind. Approaching this project, I soon realized that I wanted to respond creatively. Initially, I planned to write a poem in Milton’s style but was soon dissuaded by realizing, firstly, that the constraints of mimicking a 17th century epic poem would almost certainly limit my creativity, and secondly that the whole reason I wanted to respond creatively to Paradise Lost was to add my own modern, feminist, slightly critical, and new perspective to this 400 year-old work.
While reading Milton’s epic poem, I was repeatedly struck by the presence of the Garden of Eden, and the Tree. These powerful beings were essential to the narrative, the story could not have functioned without them, and yet they remained silent and unable to react throughout the story. In Milton’s world, gardens and trees cannot communicate, exercise the power they clearly hold, or fight back. Additionally, I couldn’t help noticing that Milton robbed Eve of those same abilities. In fact, it appeared to me that Milton’s treatment of nature in Paradise Lost mirrored his treatment of Eve and by extension, all women. Eve, like the garden, is innocent, and falls prey to Satan’s corruption. Eve’s beauty, like that of Eden’s, is repeatedly emphasized, while her strength is dismissed despite the fact that her actions are pivotal to the story.
This comparison of Eve with the Garden lead me to consider in more depth the role the Tree of Knowledge plays in the story. Satan treats the Tree as a tool in his scheme to undermine God and ruin humanity—and he manipulates it in almost the same way he manipulates Eve and Adam. In Anne Gossman’s fascinating article “The Use of the Tree of Life in ‘Paradise Lost”, she writes that while The Tree is disregarded by Adam and Eve, “Satan openly misuses it.” (Gossman, Page 681). The Tree, in her words also “bears silent witness to all that Adam and Eve ignore.” (687.) The Tree of Knowledge (also sometimes used interchangeably with the Tree of Life) is, while perhaps not written explicitly as possessing consciousness, nonetheless functions as an important character in Paradise Lost. And, when Eve eats the fruit and the “Earth tremble’d from her entrails, as again/In pangs, and Nature gave a second groan” (Milton, Book 9, 1,001-1,002), the earth itself becomes an autonomous and arguably god-like power. This quote affected me deeply and became the basis for my poem. If the Tree was indeed a character in Paradise Lost, albeit a mostly silenced one, I wanted to know what the poem would look like from its perspective. If “nature” could do more than just groan, then what would it be feeling, saying, thinking and experiencing throughout the story? What would an eco-critical approach to Paradise Lost look like?
After discovering multiple articles all exploring these themes, I was tempted to write a full-length essay. Satan’s treatment of the Tree of Knowledge is the initial attack on humanity. In Leah Marcus’ article: “Ecocriticism and Vitalism in Paradise Lost.”, she writes that “the physical act of picking the forbidden fruit sets in motion a chain of events by which the earth and nature fall out of equilibrium as a direct consequence of the initial violation of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. (99), and Milton himself seems to echo this stance when, after Eve eats from the tree, he blames Satan who first “profane’d” it, more language that suggests harm toward the earth being a central part of the original sin.
My poem explores some of these themes from the perspective of the Tree, and is broken into three parts: the Tree’s awareness of itself, the arrival and attack of the snake, and Eve’s eating the fruit. And while it was difficult to keep this poem to the length it is—I wanted to write much more—I am proud and surprised at what I was able to learn about the text through this project.
Works Cited
Milton, John. Paradise Lost. The John Milton Reading Room edited by Thomas H. Luxon. 1997-2023. https://milton.host.dartmouth.edu/reading_room/pl/book_9/text.shtml
Marcus, Leah S. “Ecocriticism and Vitalism in Paradise Lost.” Milton Quarterly, vol. 49, no. 2, 2015, pp. 96–111. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26603193.
Gossman, Ann. “The Use of the Tree of Life in ‘Paradise Lost.’” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, vol. 65, no. 4, 1966, pp. 680–87. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27714948.
Sprockets and Springes 