by IRENE FOWLER, Contributor

“Adam and Eve were standing on the bank of a brook, and before them lay the corpse of Abel, who had been killed by Cain. As they sat there, not knowing what they should do with the corpse, suddenly a little bird fell from a nearby tree. The little bird was still very young and could not fly. The fall killed it. Adam and Eve looked at the dead bird and saw that it was a raven. Soon the old raven flew by, and when he saw that his young one was dead, he scratched a hole in the ground with his feet, and laid it inside. Then he scratched the hole full and flew away. Adam and Eve observed all this and followed the raven’s example. They made a hole in the earth, laid Abel’s corpse in it, and covered it with earth. This was the first human grave.”

– “Das erste Grab,” a folktale from Poland about the first grave of mankind, told by Otto Knoop, translated by D. L. Ashliman – folklorist and Professor Emeritus of German, University of Pittsburgh

To read Irene’s new poem “The Fraternal Order of Cain” click:

The Fraternal Order of Cain

by Irene Fowler

Birthright trashed; sold out to the lustful, lawless, murderous, brotherhood of Cain
For a mess of pottage; fleeting worldly rewards, and perverse, earthly gain
Flaunting morbid signs of the vicious, insensate, reptilian brain
At war with humanity; at odds with reason, virtue and decency
The toxic Cainan brand; an imprimatur, of low-vibrational, pernicious, regency
Humanity, steps away from freefall, into the abyss, and wide-scale destruction
Shattered precious cornerstones, of truth and charity; halts, societal reconstruction.

**

Cyclones and tsunamis of human chaos, penury, and terror, ride the brotherhood’s wake
Restful sleep, occluded; nighttime is vested in churning up villainy; to prep and oven-bake
Feeding and stoking red, hot, flashes, flames and fires, of brotherly dissent and discord
Innocence and purity, scoffed at, their agenda bereft of comity or concord
Inquired of, by the Divine Creator, for Abel, his unjustly, murdered brother
Cain, the killer, remorseless and scornful of repentance, is loath to bother
His mark, visible today, in hardened, hateful hearts; destined to never join the amiable
ranks, of phileo-lovers.

**

On their quick-step march to resource-driven conflict, and wars of planetary extinction
In consonance with discordant beats, lacking goodly sound, or distinction
Nations are all on the brink, as the countdown, nears the dreaded zero hour
Leadership touts unclear paths to restore man’s equilibrium, well-being and power
As titanic ships of state, flail, teeter and take on water
The powers that be, implacable and merciless, yield no quarter

The Fraternal Order of Cain, disdainful of the brotherly, common good, by and by, will
crumble; cease to reign.

**

© 2022 by Irene Fowler

The Raven, painting by Angelika Weinekoetter