We must decay and die

We must decay and die, says the Voice, for God hungers to know decline. The rain and red leaves of autumn are not enough, for trees and squirrels do not imagine the penetrating wind of Death as do we. It was, indeed, the Voice confides, among those prototype trees--whose leaves were changeless as emerald jade--that God grew bored and knew fear.
We did not steal, but were fed the jewelfruit of knowledge. The serpent was God’s desire, curling from the ground, caressing the tree, glinting with holy gold and singing in sibilance of the honey that could be gotten no other way.
The woman’s deliberating approach to the forbidden—no motion has been as gorgeous since. The plucking was the shudder of a harp. With that first succulent crushing between her human teeth, with the rilling of that violet juice down his chin, the whole tall tree of the universe lit up; God has known no greater joy since. All the flowers in Eden bloomed at that instant.

The reward was dirt and blood.

A cataclysm of hard-eyed angels tore Home away--
Opening a chasm that split to a quick of fire.
The two slept that first night in terror, alone with hunger and bare ground.

In dark, the Voice came.
There God was, trying to explain.
There God was, trying to make it all right.

Where else, said the Voice, could I come to but to you?
Who else could grant me help?
In my boundless Heart, all lamps are lit. My Body is the Blackness primeval, out of which all light is formed.

But—but.
The roll of a planet, carrying me away from the sun—
A blow to my skull, blotting out song forever;
My flesh rending from my flesh like the tearing of a fruit,
And all the swelling up and the withering away—

In all these I am meek and small, and my ignorance is as the desert: vast.
For knowledge, I would have done anything.
For knowledge, I would have done the very same as you.

Help me, I beg you.
If you say no, we will be as we were. The noon of Eden will be restored. The noon of Eden—only say, and ever will it remain.

But, I beg you.
Teach me separation.
Teach me, then return.
Light me.
Return with your wealth, and build the joy of the universe as it were a store of gold.
Light me,
Like a store of incense torched.
Light me,
Set it all on fire--
Illuminate my substance,
Like a jewel locked too long away.

The choice was given.

Noon comes now, and noon is gone.
The sky comes apart;
the leaves turn to flakes of blood, and melt away into the earth.
We lay, then, on naked ground, and we chose.
What, do you say, that we gave away?
What, do you say, we gain?