Keep the naked bodies
off the stage
and you end up with epic
Or anti-epic. Blake believed
in the moon as a breast,
in the eye as a home of sin and wonder,
In the poem
and the print
as lovers of one another,
In the muscled, gentle lovers
and their blisses
and the nearness
Of exile as dual blessing.
Oh, I wish for more
than either Milton’s diction
Or Blake’s apocalypse can offer.
I wish for comedy and grace.
I wish either lover
Looked the other lover in the face.
Baby, when we bring our fallen
bodies to our bower,
I will ask you about your crocuses this spring.
Tell me they survived the epic
winter, even if they died.
Jottings from Milton on Adam Unparadised, the failed version of a play that eventually was recast as Paradise Lost. See Katharine Fletcher's notes on Milton and Performance.
