You seem to treat language as an impediment to sight and a separation from nature—a fascinating theme, though a rewrite of Genesis, where things were named as they were created. Your new Eve is tempted, not to partake of knowledge, but arguably the reverse, to resist language, and is banished from a pre-linguistic Eden. (S2 is my favorite, btw.) Language seems, logically, to have been wiped out in the Flood, though it’s curiously identified with the “wash of God.” I don’t know what to make of the “strange tribes” who retain their sight but are carried over the Flood by “craft like words of flesh” (the Word made flesh?). Ultimately, they stand with Eve above the world and in the light, while the Blind Poet labors in linguistic darkness below.
As usual, I’m sure there’s much I’ve failed to grasp, but I suspect the poem also deliberately resists a clear interpretation, as it does a clear meter and a clear rhyme scheme. I struggle with it, and it struggles with itself.
|