ROBERT PHILLIPS
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              Expulsion

       Etching by Lars Bo, 1962
       (for Elinor and Jim)

                  Paradise: a Persian word meaning “walled garden.”
                  And this eastward-facing Edenic plot is fenced in
                  like a rich man’s compound. What’s the point
                  of the points on the fence? No one’s out there to try
                  to climb in. Marble lions top posts like bookends.
                  The garden is circular, overgrown with trees,
                  including the Tree of Knowledge, lifting limbs
                  in supplication. Somewhere the subtle serpent lies.

                  Suddenly the wrought-iron gate swings open
                  between stone stanchions. From out of the forest
                  soar myriad fowl, making their own expulsions
                  in formations like swallows, some large as pelicans,
                  all ghostly white, as if already grieving their loss.
                  In the far right-hand corner the beguiled couple
                  exit. She faces the future, he looks back.
                  But after this, there is no looking back.