How for the new thing can there be a word?

How can we know

The act, the form itself, unnamed, unheard,

Or for the first time go

Again on the road that runs ere memory

Snares it in syllables

And rings its burial bells

In gossip or music or poetry?

Yet we would not remember, but would be.

Why should we muse

On this great world that always is no more,

Or hope to hear sometime the great lost news?

It was all before.

And we would be where we were bred,

In Eden an hour away,

Though still our cheeks are red

For what is only in remembrance

Revolt or sin or guilt or shame,

Or some word much the same,

But was a haze of blood from foot to head,

Was that, and nothing said.

Innocent, knowing nothing of innocence,

We learned it from the sad memorial name

First uttered by the offence.

And now the two words seem

A single, fabulous, reciprocal glory,

A dream re-enacted in another dream,

And all accomplished as we plucked the bough.

Stories we know. There is another story.

If one of you is innocent let him tell it now.