16 JUNE 1990, Page 30

Miles from Eden

A time like this - Seeing a youngish man, Say barely forty or not yet Fifty, get cut down — is to Know such a final thing, Complete, definitive, Cruel as Truth as She swings round the shockbends, Riding the Destiny Train To God knows where - Then after a while of Hopeless grieving, instead Of death, I think of Adam Crouching naked in some Corner of Eden, God In the garden, grave as Thunder, His pansophic Gaze forging the years.

J. F. Greene