The God who met us in the cool of evening
and let us see the sunlight on his face
now hides from us as first we hid in Eden,
while good and evil gladly take his place.

But surely they will save us from what's coming:
They'll not sit idle while we weep and pray
or silent stand to see our children crumbling
to fall like ashes into open graves.

But when the evening falls, bereft and empty,
the tallies of our goodness fall like leaves
for no one comes to meet us with a welcome,
and no one weeps with us in all our grief.

We weep, but still the desert's dry and thirsty—
the good we do can only do so much.
And still the serpent stings us without mercy,
reminding us of all that we have lost:

The wonder and the beauty we were given,
the home we've never known, but know its theft
because we took the only thing forbidden.
Now good and evil's all that we have left.

Not 'til one comes who knows the loss of Eden,
whose goodness is no substitute for love,
who does not turn away even from evil—
not until then will we see God with us.

The Garden of Eden in the left panel of Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights By Hieronymus Bosch – This file has been extracted from another file, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=148816