Bestowal

A year ago, I learned about Milton's obsession
with light. Not only from radiant spheres
above but, whole wisdom of this framed
picture, this snapshot of time, mine own
heart hung up next to the sons of men
lining the wall, scoured over with pin scratches,
thumbnail-sketches of paradise, written over
like old wives tales, recipes for truth:
one who regularly uses black cumin
will never suffer heart pains, or loneliness
but pumpkins, strangely according to old books
no healer can abide, seen standing over the porch,
like angels of death, so it reads.
The order is important, even to fallen angels,
and gardens so over-born with growth, nothing
rotting but swollen pregnant forever with potential feasting
always, the burden of hungry mouths, the sop
wasting souls of pallid believers, first bestow bounty
and then justice, that is the way;
the midnight road through quaking aspen,
quaking light, quaking in the presence
which is not absent, it resides,

takes till morning, for he dwelleth
between my shoulders; like milkweed, or moths,
sweet marmalades, or manna
they are as bread, as honey, as oil
consecrating the ages, the flit of stories
against molars and milk-cut bicuspids
it tastes, as meal loaves to the young
as to the infant, oil, the butter that builds brains,
as to the elder, honey nectar in the daily fruit
of this mocking wilderness.
He composed words into clay, breathed
bodies, made bricks and mortar for human
houses and airy temples. Cut the Leviathin
up for a blubbery scaled floor, indentured music
and the stairwell where devils ran up,
ding-dong-ditch on Heaven's kitchen door.
but the spirit, as Milton suspected, must have some collateral
some space agreed upon to string damage
up like lanterns of oil, of merit more worthily lit
then spun-web spiders, great poems, spinners
of wool jackets, or weavers of great blankets,
warmed from cinders in cold fires never open,
no more than any other potato supper diner, to grace.
 

 

Reviews

[Markymark]

Excellent piece, albeit I take it that you're not the type who needs someone to tell you that. What was it that Frost said about form? Something about playing tennis without a net. Hmmmmm. Well I like both. Rondeau, sestina and the like. Milton's 10 syllable lines are fantastic too. As long as a piece can be grasped. If abstraction is too much, a piece may be brilliant (like light) but altogether ungrasped (like darkness). I followed this piece. Kudos.


When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodg'd with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide,
"Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?"
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies: "God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts: who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed
And post o'er land and ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait."

[Ed Hart]

Whenever I'm in town I always dine here; the waitresses are topless, and the apple pie is divine.