my fate in my God’s good
grace, and
i think it is better to spend
seventy years loving
even if it means an eternity of
debt i must repay.
darling, maybe you can be
my salvation.
there is nothing i wouldn’t give
for your earthly affection.
no gift of god, no
promise of heaven.
memory and melody intertwine,
much like space and stories,
and i know that if leave you now
i will be plagued by your absence.
though the oxygen will eventually
eat us both alive
at least there will be some of it
left when we’re gone.
and i dare say
someone will remember us,
even in another time.
because woman, in the metaphysical,
time and space are
irrelevant, indifferent -
i am yours.
Analysis:
For this assignment, I decided to write a poem from Adam’s perspective when he makes the decision to fall with Eve. Though much of John Milton’s Paradise Lost is not kind to Eve – often casting her and her actions in a misogynistic and infantilizing light – there is space to romanticize Adam’s sacrifice in falling with Eve. Offered the chance to remain in Eden with another woman, Adam refuses, thinking that he won’t find love again that resembles what he has with Eve. This act is not the noblest that he could have committed, as he could have asked God to die in place of Eve and burden himself with her sins. But there is a certain drama in his request to fall with her, even though he knows his fate will be terrible, to be inseparable in both life and death.
I decided to incorporate a version of Sappho’s famous quote “Let me tell you this: someone in some future time will think of us,” to separate this display of love Adam is showing toward Eve away from the Christian tradition. When many of us hear of Adam and Eve, we may be prone to think of their relationship strictly in terms of traditional biblical gender relationships, and in many ways, this is not an unfair assessment of their place in cultural discourse. However, Milton’s adaptation of biblical events lends it to a broader interpretation of their love as not strictly out of Godly duty – but one formed out of stubborn, genuine affection. There was not much hope to be had, entering the unexplored, terrifying wilderness of Earth. I think the desire for legacy is at the root of the human existence, and so I assigned Adam the hope that, if nothing else would come out of their tribulations, at least there was hope that one day they would be remembered.
Passage I adapted from:
“fairest of creation, last and best
Of all God’s works, creature in whom excelled
Whatever can to sight or thought be formed,
Holy, divine, good, amiable, or sweet
How art thou lost, how on a sudden lost,
Defaced, deflow’red, and now to death devote?
…for with thee
Certain my resolution is to die.”