Their eyes opened. That is, they were no longer innocent,nthey took on the body of flesh and then, the garden ofninnocence, they were out of it. They were then wayfarers innthe world, you see. So my feeling is — it seems so ridiculousnthat the beginning of the world is based on disobedience. Itnjust doesn’t make any sense at all.nBell: People think of the story of the Garden of Eden as antragedy. You’re saying it isn’t?nLytic: It’s not a tragedy, it’s just the beginning of life. InnSPEAKING TRUE by Paul Ramseyn”Three million yearsnThe Spirit, ranging as it will,nIn sun, in darkness, lives in change.nChanged and not changed. The spirit hearsnIn drifting fern the morning air.”n— Janet Lewis, “Fossil, 1975″nWhat is it that poetry does and is? We can say thatnpoetry is about why people do things, and aboutnwhat we know, and don’t know, of human motive. We cannalso say that poetry is in language, sounded, and that poemsnshould sczy what they mean and be the right and exactnlocution for what is said, that the sound should echo and benechoed by and be of the meaning. An ideal? Yes, in goodnpoetry approached, sometimes nearly. Poetry is a way ofnspeaking true, and the truth is of sound and vision, thenrhetoric fitting the truth a poem conveys and is.nWhat do we know of human motive? There is a tale Inretell in a poem of mine entitled Â¥og Days for GreatnCranberry Island:nAnd on the south end of the island still mist,nthen fog.nThere has been mist on the place of thenPrussian lady,nBorn Dorethea AlbertinanCalled Hannah Caroline.nWhen she heard that her husband had died in thenArctic she threw his stuffed seals in the bay.nThe story really happened: at least my informants on GreatnCranberry Island were quite sure that it really had, and somenof them say that the stuffed seals were picked up by a shipnand taken to Boston, where some of them are on display in anmuseum.nI tell the story to students and then ask about motives —nfifth-grade students, college students, graduate students —nand hear many of the same answers: because she loved him,nor because she was tired of the seals, or because she resentednhis being a sea captain and traveling far and dangerously, ornvarious other notions and variations. Then I ask a tricknPaul Ramsey is poet in residence and Gerry Professor ofnEnglish at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga. Thisnessay is adapted from his preface to ContemporarynReligious Poetry (Paulist Press).nthe beginning of life you have comedy and tragedy too. Butnit seems to me you cannot fall from innocence, no way to.nYou quicken into living, and you fall into, you enter, thenwilderness of time.nThat’s a mighty broad subject. I’m going to make somenbiscuits, if you’ll cut the ham. Can you all eat some ham?nThe turkey is, well, not deliquescent, I hope it’s not, but wenmight best avoid it.nquestion: “Well, will someone give me the Correct Answer?”nand the response normally is resistance, more or lessnpolite: “How can we tell the Correct Answer?” or “Who arenyou to think there is a correct answer?” or whatever. Butnthere is a correct answer: We don’t know. Or, as I finish thenpoem:nWhen she heard her husband had died in thenArctic, she threw the stuffed seals in the bay.nWhether out of grief or hatred, it is too late to say.nWe might, with a lucky investigation, be able to say muchnbetter whether her motive was grief or hatred or both ornnnSEPTEMBER 1988/13n