Nicolas Poussin's(1594-1665) "Le Printemps ou Le Paradis terrestre"(1660-64)

Among the clouds
flies El of the Canaanites,
the Sumerian Enki
in his white nightshirt,
bearded and pale
of skin and hair.
   

Below, on the ground

among the ample green

forested grasslands

of Eden

Eve points El to Adam.

(Some would say
it's the apples
in the tree
she wants Adam to see,
a wily woman corrupting
the simple man
when his male creator
has flown away.
But this is a path
we do not take.)   
           
But Adam
sees only Eve,
gazing at her face,
not at El in the clouds,
and perhaps it is Adam
of whom El is escaping,
a god who lost
his creature's interest
to a woman.
               
But it was Eve
who got the blame,
not Adam,
Adam who didn't gaze up
in the sky
to see the old god
flying in the sky
without wings,
El the abandoned,
soon to be usurped
by Yahweh his son,   
the storm god.

Yahweh who would
so hate women
that he would erase
his mother Asherat
from the religion
of his believers,
Yahweh who would
bring forth his
own son with a
virgin mortal.

And perhaps
the darkening clouds
behind El
are Yahweh,
coming to
embrace his father
with his thunder clouds,
to erase the Lord of Wind
and Water
bringing forth an age
of his own thunderous
wrath and spite.

25.10.2009