Marred Desires

If less of mud than minerals and marl,
Still it’s true mankind was formed by God
Of uncursed soil and neatly contoured rib.
The disparate elements a gracious sign
Of Deity not yet obscured by dusk.
And there was evening, as the Good Book says.   

But then there was the stark and brooding dawn.
We are there yet, in that unsubtle place,
Toe-teetered on the line between the light
And viscous dark, although some still believe
We’re in the third day with its muddied earth
And spotted fruit with its ambiguous seeds.

Averse to leave the saturated dirt
Or set aside the slush of lust and pride,
We daub our cheeks and nails with particles
Of pliant clay to augment and impress,
Our speckled features thicker and more coarse
Than when first shaped and fired by nimble God.

Then, sweating in the piercing sun we weigh
Our large and unassuaged desires and thirsts.
At last to quench them, climb the outlawed tree
To take and eat the surely pleasing fruit.
Much later, breathless from this exercise,
We’ll scrape our skin with broken shards, ashamed.

Greg Huteson’s poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from the Honest Ulsterman, the Saint Katherine Review, the Christian Century, Better Than Starbucks, The Road Not Taken, and other journals. For the past twenty years, he’s resided in China and Taiwan, and his writing often reflects these contexts.

Founded in 1957 by the great Russell Kirk, Modern Age is the forum for stimulating debate and discussion of the most important ideas of concern to conservatives of all stripes. It plays a vital role in these contentious, confusing times by applying timeless principles to the specific conditions and crises of our age—to what Kirk, in the inaugural issue, called “the great moral and social and political and economic and literary questions of the hour.”