Privileged

Imagine, if you will, the world is fair.
Dice come up even, cards are shuffled well,
And chance is always equal everywhere.
For some of us, this world would be a hell
Because we are so used to other ways.
If every card you've drawn has been a king
You'd curse a hand of deuces or of treys.
It's natural. It touches everything.
The larger problems start when we assert
That others' decks have dealt as ours have done
And they have simply chosen to invert
Their fortunes: when we think that everyone
Has had the same as we have. They have not;
Nor is it always fair what we have got.

Maga

The greatest gift of God is that of peace.
Not when all others lie upon the floor
Objections brought to violent surcease
Nor when exhausted they can do no more
And glumly lie, and say that all is well,
Or cannot speak at all. In peace the goal
Is not mere quiet, or the greatest quell
But combination in a greater whole.
If we can work together all as one
And be more perfect and more unified;
If we acknowledge peace is never done
A constant process always being tried
Then we can recognize it as it lies
Between us, and permit its gifts to rise.

Etz Chayim

Why am I not surprised?
No, not surprised a bit.
Though hurt and horrified
With grief unminimized
And all things taste like shit,
Still I would say I lied
Were I to claim I read
The news surprised. A fear
I always knew was near
Lurked in my mind instead
And whispered as they bled
"They do not want you here."
I wish it were not clear
Some people want me dead.

Sonnet Analysis: John Milton

Today, I take a look at John Milton's famous sonnet on his blindness, "When I Consider How My Light Is Spent."

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 

Lodged 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.”

Triumphs:

If there is one reason I love this sonnet, it's the way John Milton, who was a prodigy, a busybody, and the very definition of a tryhard, manages to cast himself as a patient sufferer who only "stand[s] and wait[s]." I do not in any way mean to make light of Milton's actual blindness, which does seem to have been a trial to him, but the pose of martyrdom is truly an artistic tour-de-force. How does he do it? Well, first of all, he never actually says that he is standing, waiting, or anything of the sort. He's not even, necessarily, patient! The entire sestet is ventriloquized through the character of patience, speaking to him, while Milton's response is implied it is very much not explicit. In fact, the famous last sentence is, if anything, a distancing effect: it is not "you" or "I" who "also serve who only stand and wait" but "They"--as if even in the climactic moment of the poem Milton could not bring himself to actually commit to being the stationary one. At the same time, giving that much of the poem over to patience still gives the impression of the author being patient, and listening to patience, even as he fails to respond to what it has to say.

There is also a great play on the word "spent" at the end of line 1. It's only when we start out on the enjambed line 2 ("Ere half my days") that we can tell "spent" means "used up" and not simply "used." "My light is spent" could, after all, refer to how one passes the day--how the light, the "day-labour" that the speaker refers to later, is "spent" day by day. It only comes to certainly mean "I have no access to light," which is not actually an instinctive meaning for the words, once we understand both the biography of the author (always a dangerous source in a genre that is inherently imaginative) and once we try to parse "spent/Ere half my days," which definitely calls for spent as "used up." And yet the other sense of spent keeps raising its head--the sestet is, after all, about ways to spend time. They also serve who spend their light standing and waiting.

The religious references in the poem are also a great effect. The intertwining of the parable of the talents with the issue of Milton's talents in the modern sense is very well done, and of course resonates with the third sense of spent, "exchanged like money," which is an active concern within the parable. And then we get a typical Miltonic attempt to square the circle of God's might and human obligation: God doesn't actually need any of what we do; doing what God has assigned us, what his "mild yoke" has led us to, is the best service, and straining against that yoke is the only real sin. In this, especially in "His State/Is Kingly" we get the sense, recognizable from Paradise Lost if nowhere else, that for Milton the key fact of God is precisely that He (and Milton's God is definitely He) is inherently above the questions that seem so vital to humanity. 

Imperfections:

This poem, as with many Petrarchan sonnets, gets a little too cutesy at the volta, the turn between octave and sestet. In doing so, it makes a characteristic Miltonic change to normal English word order, shoving the actual action of the sentence as far back as possible and inserting what looks like a Latinate ablative absolute along the way: ""Does God exact day-labour, light denied?"/I fondly ask." "Light denied" here is really bent over backwards for the rhyme, and another delay of the verb comes in the next sentence to allow "prevent" as the final rhyme in the octave. But the most notable point is that "fondly ask" is actually the verb of the sentence that takes the entire first seven lines! This is very Milton, but it's also pretty annoying when you try to actually figure out what he's saying. When he considers his blindness and his talent being "Lodged with [him] useless," then he asks (fondly) about whether God exacts day-labour. It's a gorgeous poem, which makes it easy to miss this, but it's a terrible sentence. Which is, in a lot of ways, what Milton is all about.

Daydreams

I can imagine life another way;
It isn't hard to think it differently.
At every turn, on every single day,
A change is possible. Who would I be
If I had grasped this opportunity,
Turned left instead of right at that stop sign,
Walked instead of run? I cannot see,
Inscribed in these the ultimate design,
If there is one, to which these things align
And so I wonder. But I am quite sure
That though, perhaps, it all would have been fine
If it was different, I must still prefer
The way that in reality it went
Since I am, overall, beyond content.

Kol Nidrei

May all our vows no more be vows
(Though not, of course, the ones to you:
We mean the things we said we'd do
Inside: the little "let me nows,"
The "I'll be goods", the "yes, and hows,"
All those things we've struggled to
Achieve). Let them be blanked anew
And let our failures not arouse
Divine displeasure. Let us be
In the sight of God at least
Guiltless for our frailty
Where it has not touched man or beast
But only hurt ourselves: for these
God, forgive us, if you please.

Battle Hymn

The union only makes us strong;
Apart we cannot but be weak
For Capital will always seek
To string it's Labor force along.
It does not care for Right or Wrong
Or the destruction it will wreak;
It craves the Infinite Work Week
With workers paid the merest song.
The union lets us claim our rights,
Our power, our humanity;
To eat, to drink, to sleep out nights;
To keep our health and sanity.
So join the union, and embrace
The power of the human race.

Labor Day

The fact that we can rest today
We owe to those who came before;
They waged a thankless,  brutal war
And struck, forgoing work and pay
To change the world and have their say,
Demanding to be treated more
Like people. They kicked down the door
Enduring hardship on the way
So we as well as they could be
Our better selves: free to pursue
Something beyond the drudge of sweat;
To meet the world with dignity
Doing the things we want to do.
We celebrate; but don't forget.

Second River

Without you I slide back into my youth
Acting like the boy I used to be.
To some this might seem pleasant--and in truth,
I have but little shame of younger me.
I have no deep-born angst of older days
That traumatizes when I visit it,
Nor any huge distaste for my past ways:
The shirts I used to wear still even fit,
And I was happy being me. And yet.
And yet I long to be right back with you
To leave my past life where the sun has set
And live the life that we have wrought anew.
I do not miss the boy I was before:
I liked myself, but I like us much more.

Shapes

I miss you not like oxygen or water
(I will not die if you're removed from me)
But like an otter needs another otter
Floating hand in hand across the sea;
Like riverbends need banks to keep their course
Shaping each other over centuries;
Like Scottish oaks bent by an unseen force
Along a cliff swept by a constant breeze.
I miss you in a dark eternal way
That lingers underneath the skin, and itches;
Like stages miss the presence of a play
Or cut quilt cloth the immanence of stitches:
I don't know how to do this without you.
It's fortunate I'm not required to.