Volume > Issue > Milton on the Monday After Easter Break

Milton on the Monday After Easter Break

A POEM

By Linda Peavy | April 1984

Fifteen ‘til seven now

(That’s by my watch which nowadays

Is seven minutes fast to keep me

Rushed enough to make me stay on time)

So maybe it is really twenty-one ‘til

(My having used almost a sixty-second span

To write all this). Whatever. It’s no matter.

The tub is full and I must bathe,

Then dress, then look at Milton notes

and try to get my mind on teaching

how the great blind poet sought

to justify the ways of God to man.

Did he succeed? I rather doubt he did.

But that, like what o’clock it is,

is still no matter. For life is full

and man must bathe and dress himself

and go to meet his day with will that’s free

(as long as it obeys the sovereign Will).

Odd thing. Such freedom almost always tempts

the cat-mind to adventure out

until it meets the Fall and then is able

to agree with Milton’s Satan that

“Myself is Hell.”

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