[RCL]

Designing Words

I.

Logos:

My living breath informs all things,
the moon and sun, the earth and sea,
the sweets and sours, salves and stings,
for I am One composed of three:

Adore the Son, and honour him as mee.

Man’s beginning was my Word,
and you will find that every line
now said or sung within your world
was made by men of my design:

In whom the fullness dwels of love divine.

II.

Satan:

He ended Eden with his words
and sentenced three of us who fell,
but I revise his fallen world
to sound and sense that speak my spell:

To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.

When I inspire your vatic men
to sing the world with fiery notes,
my power is Promethean—
its words flare from a thousand throats:
Of man’s First Disobedience. . . .

III.

Mankind:

Some verses of our Genesis
and Milton’s lines on primal treason
prove poetry can best express
the good-in-evil—logos, reason:

Happier, had it suffic’d him to have known
Good by it self, and Evil not at all.
For ever now to have their lot in pain.

We hear these bold immortal voices,
and may defer to I. or II.
when whispering prayers or shouting curses,
but poets sing that both are true.

For I behold them soft’nd and with tears.


Italic lines from Milton, Paradise Lost

From Ghost Trees