How shall I part and wither wander down
Into a lower world, to this obscure
And wild? How shall we breathe in other air
Less pure, accustomed to immortal fruits?
Paradise Lost, Book XI
Students say Say-in
when they read Paradise Lost
White girls from Catholic schools
forever long to be cool
The Lord of Darkness needs a hard T
whichever way he flies
I long to meet that blank verse
but his daughter, Deborah,
forced scribe, gets in my way
He turned her out & the lame sister too
for his third wife, Happiness
at last, after the divorce tracts
two wives in the blood-soaked
childbed & Civil War, failures
Blind Milton, or Mil-in, worked
his great poem in a green suit
and sword, leg hooked over a chair
made his daughters milk him
in ten languages, they sold
some of his books
Milton’s grand ambivalence
gets in my way, my dreams
long for no tyrant on a cloud-ship
I want the plastic red apple
despite everything
in this lower world