Paradise Created

Tie little bells

to each curl in her hair,^[1] and

Ring Him.

Fill Him with a symphony –

the multitude of lilting chimes

when we altar served at church                  

or the Hallgrimskirkja’s hourly toll

sung from carillon of green,

from the mouths of the Holy Trinity –

Hallgrímur, Guðríður and Steinunn^[2],

different voices intone the same song^[3] –

1 + 1 + 1 = 1^[4]

God math – God music – God made

darkness around the mind, yet it is filled

with light – a paradise within^[5]

even the blind^[6] can see.

Ring Him.

Fill Him with this wish –

a euro tossed in the Trevi settles

among the currency of paradise –

apple core wasted in turquoise waters

casually tossed over shoulder

of the man with one less rib

a whisper for knowledge

loosens the cage around his heart

in a gust passions come loose

shoves him out of Eden,

a beggar with no coin,

hands uplocked,^[7] held to starry sky,

waiting to dance

to look upon the spirits,

but fingers wound too tight

strings tuned too tight,

secure^[8] and rigid – paralyzed

without paradise. On the outside

looking in. Look in!

The fountain’s reflection

shows Him and Him and Him

and him. Bells clanging, hymn

and hymn and hymn and hymn.

Gold clinking – is it loud enough?

Will He hear? This blind prayer

cast out in the darkness, only

to be caught, reeled in

on the serpent’s forked tongue –

temptation stops the hand

from moving, the body

from dancing, the soul

from growing –

the church is a hollow apple core,

seedless, censored^[9] –

the root of all evil

cannot be wished away

erased or spat out –

you are what you eat.^[10]

Ring him.

Fill him with stories                                             

the orchestra of posey

round and round until

we all fall down

and everything is rosy –

Felix culpa!^[11]

work to be done –

clean the universe:

dust the stars, tidy the trees,

create a personal paradise –

the melody of breeze,

the strain of light

to fill the world

to let us see

the bells

tied: released

when rung.

Paradise within us calls

to greet temptation at the door

gaze into slit-snake eyes

– realize he is the one going blind –

ring the bell tied to her hair –

a messenger of sin, beware!

he tries to sound like God

the tyrant^[12] lording the sky

who has strung each star

on His fingers, a puppet that shines

only on His command, but he,

angel of light, offers free light,

free hands, free bells that ring

whenever they want, oh!

create a cacophony of choice

a grating sound – slam the door

and return to your couch,

seasick poet, shake away the sea legs,

stumble, fumble your pen no more –

fingers like puppets at your command –

you, the author, museless, motionless

do not recognize paradise

staring you in the face^[13] –

you, who hunger for words

cannot find them in Babel,

you, who thirst for salvation

refuse to remove rose-coloured lenses –

they censor the sin, and virtue stills

unless it meets the snake

eats the apple

and plummets

like Icarus –

he tried to fly to God

with untempered wings.^[14]

Drown, drown, in this sea of sin

poor Lycidas aboard perfidious bark^[15]

bells that lie, bells that cry

caged in his watery tomb –

with only the wish

to fly.

Walk on water

without grief^[16], the mirthful man

sinks, ready to meet his maker,

but uneven steps do not hold

on black bile^[17] waves –

you cannot look back

to see if you have an audience –

Orpheus – better off blind,^[18]

too quiet yet his sound

reached through Heaven and Hell

a raft of words floating

on this bumpy ocean,

crests sinful waves –

fixed sentences of a sad soul –

melancholy learned to swim

while mirth splashed around

in vain.^[19] The bells still ring

yet no one hears

the race of mourners^[20]

and their felled tears –

applause, applause!

Orpheus’ severed hands clap,^[21]

a repentance to God

for taking the bait,

for sacrificing his gift

for lack of faith –

an appeal, a prayer,

an audience himself,

watches as poetry is torn

into stanzas, letters, lines,

rubble and parts –

Ring, clap, do all you can

but do not look back

into Eden. Be a good poem,^[22]

put yourself back together,

limb by limb, grow new fruit,

let the spirit^[23] crawl

up your roots,

stretch and yawn

a brand new song,

virtuous notes

bandaged words

ring loud and clear

fill the church^[24]

for all to hear

the crash that followed

the happy fall

was silent. But strain your trembling ears!^[25]

Listen to the bells

ring ring ring

tuned to each other

one and the same

body to spirit has taken shape,

feathers are full

Noah’s ark without the snake,

off to paradise –

just close your eyes

welcome the bells

welcome the blind.

Ring Him.

Fill Him.

Bring Him

down

from the sky,

a birth

from that pregnant cloud^[26] –

let Him see through

human eyes,

let us

see through

His.

~ After Milton

Serafina Piasentin

^[1] Book 4 of Paradise Lost says of Eve’s appearance: “But in wanton ringlets waved / As the vine curls her tendrils, which implied / Subjection, but required with gentle sway” (4.306-308). It was her initial sin that resulted in the fall of man, showing an unexpected exercise of her free will as opposed to being Adam’s puppet. It was this that alerted God and instigated his punishment. The result of her action was the creation of a new kind of paradise.  

^[2] Hallgrímur Pétursson was the greatest religious poet of Iceland. Pétursson’s Passion Hymns, which includes fifty meditations on Christ’s suffering, rivals the Bible, functioning “as the people’s sacred text” (Swatos Jr. 37). He has contributed to the Christian canon through poetry; Milton’s Paradise Lost does the same, in a different way. Milton reimagines the Bible, criticizing certain Christian social concepts, including the Holy Trinity. Guðríður and Steinunn were his wife and daughter. The bells were named in their honour and are identical to each other both in appearance and sound despite representing separate beings.

^[3] The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one “inasmuch as they speak and act with unanimity.” This quote taken from Milton’s de DoctrinaChristiana shows that Milton, an anti-trinitarian, is not destroying the concept of the Trinity but is rather re-working it in terms of monism. Each voice comes from a different vessel but says the same thing: become one with God by following his path of unity as opposed to Satan’s fragmented path.

^[4] “God’s design of union is mystic, yet not incomprehensible” (Revard 12).

^[5] “A paradise within” (12.587) refers to a state of mind and virtuous behavior in alignment with God.

^[6] Milton was going blind while writing Paradise Lost. In Book 3, Milton says, “ever-during dark / Surrounds me” (3.45-46) “So much the rather thou Celestial Light / Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers / … that I may see and tell / Of things invisible to mortal sight” (3.51-55). Despite the impediment of his blindness, Milton creates a paradise within himself that fills him with a spiritual light and allows him to see in a different way.

^[7] In Milon’s “The Passion,” the image of “grief my feeble hands up-lock” (45) can be applied to the way Adam and Eve feel after being expelled from Eden—grief at choosing Satan’s fragmented path results in them begging/praying to be let back into Paradise. Or, it invokes the image of Adam and Eve walking out of paradise hand in hand—their hands uplocked together. Or, it can refer to the poet who has been kicked out of their Paradise of ideas and whose hands are uplocked in writer’s block. Each needs to find a prophetic strain to create a paradise within themselves.

^[8] “Secure” means “to make free from worry of apprehension; to put at ease; (also) to make careless or overconfident” (OED secure, v.²^.a.). Its etymology is “cura” which means “care,” and “se” which means “without.” The binary meaning of carefree and negligent is used doubly in Milton’s works. Therefore, the poet, and Adam and Eve, are guilty of neglecting their duties to write and follow God’s orders respectively. However, there is a third meaning in this poem: “to hold firmly in place; to fasten or do up” (OED secure, v.^5.a.), or to be “paralyzed.”

^[9] Milton’s Areopagitica argues against the censorship of books. According to John X. Evan’s Imagery as Argument in Milton’s Areopagiticia, “such fortifications, shut up tight against sin, keep out light and truth as well and impose a darkness that gradually weakens intellectual awareness and moral vision” (191). This is why Milton’s main character is Satan—it allows for readers of Paradise Lost to consume anti-God rhetoric and come to their own conclusions about their beliefs. It does not do to be morally blind; to build a paradise within, one must see good and evil and use their rational abilities to choose which moral standpoint would make for a better paradise.  

^[10] Milton uses alimentary allegories to explain morality through taste. If your animal spirits are off-kilter, so will be your soul. Denise Gigante’s Milton’s Aesthetics of Eating claims “Milton himself was aware of the epistemological implications of taste, whereby the Latin sapere can mean both "to taste" and "to know” (89). You are what you eat is a common phrase that refers to “moral taste” (89) —that you are the knowledge you consume. The forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge resulted in a change in Adam and Eve’s moral character—they too became forbidden.

^[11] “Felix Culpa” refers to “the Fall of Man or the sin of Adam as resulting in the blessedness of the Redemption… a happy fall” (OED, felix culpa n.). The result of the fall is the opportunity to create a paradise within.

^[12] Satan explains God’s goal at the Pandaemonium, saying God’s “sole reigning holds the Tyranny of Heav’n” (1.124) in order to “do ought good never… / but ever to do ill our sole delight” (1.159-160). This is what Satan claims God said to rally his fellow fallen angels and demons against God.

^[13] The idea of prophetic inspiration must follow the victory over temptation—continuing to wear rose-coloured glasses and trying to avoid the temptations of the world will not gift the poet with the ability to write at a higher strain—the idea of paradise staring you in the face and being oblivious to it is both an allusion to Milton’s blindness, but it is also the idea of allowing your virtue to be tempered by temptation so your instrument can be tuned to write about the victory over sin.

^[14] Icarus is the fool coined in Milton’s Areopagitica. In the Greek myth, he knew his wings were not strong enough to carry him to the sun. “A fool will be a fool with the best book” (48). Censoring information will not protect the fool, but it will harm the wise—someone like Lycidas. See ¹³.

^[15] Milton’s “Lycidas” drowns due to “that fatal and perfidious bark, / Built in the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark, / That sunk so low that sacred head of thine” (100-102). Let down by the Church as well as his own unawareness of sin, Lycidas is a victim of censorship and falsities spread by an institution meant to bring him closer to God. Refer to “bark, n.³,” and “perfidious, adj.” in the OED.

^[16] According to A Table of Humane Passions by Nicolas Coeffeteau, “griefe is a torment of the mind and body” (318). In relation to Paradise Lost, if Adam and Eve are moved by grief after the fall, it will only result in a tormented self as opposed to a tempered self. Being without grief allows for clarity to act in accordance with God.

^[17] From Godbout’s Saturnine Constellations: one of the four humors, “black bile (unlike blood, bile and phlegm)… [is] ‘a kind of metaphor for the dark mood of melancholy’ (Radden 63)” (5).

^[18] The Triumph and Death of Orpheus in the English Renaissance by Kenneth R. R. Gros Louis says “Milton asks for protection against the descendants of those who had dismembered Orpheus” (78), implying that Milton fears he might end up like Orpheus—the failed poet. Orpheus fails because he succumbs to his passions which undermines his songs and robs him of an audience. Without an audience, a poet is useless. Milton is afraid of becoming Orpheus, but Orpheus could have benefited from being blind like Milton. If blind, Orpheus would not have been tempted to look back at his wife. Milton is not as similar to Orpheus as he fears.  

^[19] In Godbout’s Saturnine Constellations, he says “In ’L’Allegro,’ one finds melancholy as black obscurity, whereas in ‘Il Penseroso’ melancholy is a bright muse” (52-53). Whether the poet chooses the sanguine or melancholic perspective will affect the paradise they are able to create. In a sea of sin, only the individual who took the time to learn how to swim will benefit from temptation rather than succumb to it.  

^[20] Milton’s says, “Had got a race of mourners” (56) in reference to the grief-stricken audience in “The Passion.”

^[21] As opposed to Milton’s “uplocked hands (“The Passion” 45), Orpheus’ hands are severed and clapping—loose and free from the body. He is unable to write—this failed poet—and having succumbed to temptation and suffered dismemberment, also cannot put his hands together to pray for redemption.

^[22] Just as you are what you eat, you are what you write. This is why you need to resist temptation and temper your soul to be a good person to create a good poem.

^[23] The opportunity to repent, learn, and enhance the “body up to spirit work” (5.478) was a result of the fall. By resisting temptation and rationally choosing good over evil, the individual tempers their virtues and becomes a good person in alignment with God. Struggling with the physiological blindness of the body has allowed for the illumination of other epistemological senses, ultimately building a ladder to the spirit.

^[24] Milton’s idea to reform the church in Areopagitica is to fill it with virtue as opposed to lies, censorship, and sin.

^[25] In “Lycidas,” Milton “touch'd [his] trembling ears” (77). He is straining to listen for a prophetic voice offering divine inspiration for his poem.

^[26] “Had got a race of mourners on som pregnant cloud” (56) in “The Passion” refers to Ezekiel’s prophetic vision procured through a cloud that Milton, too, seeks to experience in order to better his poetics. Just as Adam and Eve in Paradise Lost must listen to God’s virtuous Word to discover “a paradise within,” so does the poet have to be “a good poem” to create divine poems. In the case of “The Passion,” grief is not a passion that suits Milton’s skillset—it torments instead of inspires, and the poem’s incompleteness reflects this. However, by abandoning this poem, Milton learns from his mistakes and can better focus on a poetic style that brings out the best in him. The resurrection of the body to the spirit is therefore the same as the resurrection of the lost poet to the prophetic poet.