Recreating the Lost Garden through Art

"... at the foot of a hill, on the tip of a pen, by a river or lake, he contends, even only a piece of that Paradise lost, he regains..." avr

Paintings and Poem by Dr Abe V Rotor

 

 

Top left, clockwise: fishing on a forest stream (wall mural, SPU-QC), autumn by a 

mountain stream (painting, UST Publishing House),  flame tree in bloom (painting, UST),, summer vacation (mural, San Vicente Municipal Hall, Ilocos Sur. .

                                 

Come, come, let’s believe in the greatest mystery of creation,
Live it, live it well and we will not demand an explanation,
For the world’s still the same - nothing has been lost, nothing,
From the beginning, coasting through the unknown, coasting.

And we travel together in the greatest spaceship of all,
The only one we have, the only one of its kind; ephemeral
Our life could be in the vastness of space, darkness and time,
Yet in fullness we may live, leaving some glitter in our clime.

Worthy in our ways, though mortal we are, to rise after the Fall,
To rise with the Knowledge from the Fruit, to rise to the call,
To search once more for the Garden abandoned and forlorn,
Where happiness was first sown, and also, the first mourn.

And thence, man was forever vanished? It is not rightly so.
For a greater Man came to redeem us, greater than we know
In our praises, prayers and songs, bowing to a God on earth,
And we, reduced to penitents, sit in obedience by the hearth.

But prisoners in our faith have we become and our fate sealed
By rigid walls and dogmas we ought not question or bid,
But peep through a hole and believe in the destiny of our soul,
And there, Paradise is waiting, beautiful indeed is our goal.

It is a lifetime prize – and if that is so, is life but a tunnel?
We would rather see it on a horizon, its end no one can tell –
For the essence of exile is to seek beyond, and to explore
And find beauty and goodness out there and much more.

For the Fall, in God’s mystery, lies an ultimate purpose
Breaking boredom, opening the gate, to search for a cause,
For what is man’s purpose but to spread the Knowledge
That he too, can make another Paradise at its edge?

Where he makes a living, a garden by his hands he makes,
At the foot of a hill, on the tip of a pen, on rivers and lakes,
He contends, even only a piece of that Paradise lost, he regains;
From knowledge and disobedience, the whole world gains.~