The Conversion of the Professor

The professor read Plato; he dabbled in Barth
He cried upon Nietzsche and groaned over Sartre.

He studied the Forms and things-for-themselves
He took everything the library had on its shelves.

He thought about estrangement and despaired at dasein;
He marveled at the vanity of the good and the fine.

He listened to them argue how we know what we know;
He said, "I'm too stupid and my mind is too slow."

He tried to grasp Zeno, but it butchered his head;
"I am much too stupid, yes, much too stupid," he said.

"Where can I find wisdom? How can it be
that these men are so brilliant and cannot agree?"

He went home to his granddaughter, who was making plum goo
and asked her quite frankly, "What can I do?

"I—" he stopped himself in the middle of saying something dirty.
She got down her Bible and read to him from Proverbs chapter thirty.

The Professor's Trip

The professor was leaving. It was time to pack.
He threw away his stuff, and took an empty sack.

He got onto a plane. It flew like a flash.
Before the pilot knew it, they crashed.

The professor floated on the ocean, up onto the shore.
He laid still, then stood up and walked in his front door.

The Ambiance of the Professor

The professor was lost. The reason for it was something he couldn’t find.
“But,” as he put it, “that’s wholly irrelevant if you’re out of your mind.”

He survived on hazelnuts and poisonous blue roots.
At six he dined on candy cane and bamboo shoots.

He slicked his hair with beeswax and smoked water in his pipe.
“Mmm,” he murmured. “The water here is good, and it’s ripe.”

His entire time in the woods he was very careful to be polite.
He got out a hose and washed his toes every nineteenth night.

He missed his granddaughter, so he stopped by the post office and sent her a letter.
“I should’ve put it in the creek,” he said calmly and sadly. “That would’ve been better.”

He dug a piano from under the leaves, and gracefully lulled out a song,
Lost and Alone as Sand in Space, but the words, as usual, came out wrong:

A rock sinks in the sleek black sea, never to return.
The fire in my heart’s so loud I can hear it burn.

I’ll never see you again, never see you again, never, never, I cry.
The thought of you is my reason for living, but it makes me die.

The professor climbed trees; he jumped into streams; he thrashed around in the brush.
And when he missed her so bad he was blind, he unlost with a twitch and a rush.

When He Was Young and Spry

“Grandpa,” she said, “I wrote something for you to stop and read.”
He was dashing quickly down the road to check up on his speed.

He stood at attention to salute a toad, then took the proffered scroll
and gave it right back, so she read it aloud: The Dragon in the Bowl

I’th’days when my grandfather lithe and youthful was,
his now lengthous beard naught more than light fuzz,

a dragon sojourn’d unto the village market seekingly of apple pie;
but my grandpa, bloodthirst and rash, nor wanting sensible “why”,

for the sake of his kindly kin, yea, his kin and kith,
raisèd up his sword and smote the dragon thatwith.

The worm recoil’d and forthwith gave a prolong’d fiery bellow;
notwithstanding, the serpent gave battle. “A rather tough fellow,”

remarkèd the youth offhandedly as he took his lunch break
consist’d whichwas of apples, and largely of dragon steak,

whichby meanteth he that ‘twas disgusting and hard to chew.
Nevertheless, heldeth he to. “Instead I will make some stew.”

The professor approved of this longago fairytale very much, maintaining every word was true.
“Yes,” he told her, “the apples; even our diction—you have it right. That is what I used to do.”

The Courage of the Professor

They screamed in his ears, they screamed in his eyes
In their anger at the professor, they screamed out lies.

But the innocent professor didn’t flinch—what did he care?—
so he stood there and watched while they pulled out their hair.

Then, as they raced, shouting, after him, he boarded a train.
One said to the others: “Along this track is rough terrain.

We’ll wait till the professor’s asleep in the caboose
then as we go over the gorge we’ll let that car loose

and give it a big heave to the left or the right.”
They gathered around and cackled with delight.

Then there was the gorge. The schemer cried, “Quick, to the back;
our last glimpse of the professor will be as he falls off the track!”

They passed through a car where it seemed to be night.
One fumbled about and found a large candle for a light,

but when he saw what the long, red candle was, his face went white.
It didn’t have a wick, but a fuse. His teeth rattled; he took a bite.

The professor was sitting on the turfy side of the mountain, his intended destination.
The train was a pop can shaken up; then—there was no evidence of the decimation.

The Incompetence of the Professor

They knew the house was in danger; they had scene more than one spark
It was time to call the electrician and tell him the wires had begun to arc

He picked up the phone—but there was a laugh at the door:
it was the professor, inquiring as to what he was wanted for.

“Well,” explained the man embarrassedly, “not for anything particularly—
I mean, I was going to call—uh, when you—um, I know this seems silly—”

The professor quietly comforted him with a crumbly bit of sharp cheese,
so they showed him the place where the wires had been gnawed by fleas.

When he saw the problem, he calmly asked for a pickle and lumber.
“So you’re a carpenter?” they asked, confused. “No, I’m a plumber.”

They brought him a pickle, extremely small and sour
The professor nibbled at it and savored it for an hour

The brought him lumber so he repaired the bed.
“Well, that did need to be done...” the man said.

They gave him pliers, so he plied at the wall till the man said, “Bleep!”
which the professor interpreted as meaning he should go right to sleep.

They doused him with buckets and sprayed him with hoses;
it would have been more worthwhile to do that to the roses,

but they kept it up till the house burst out in flame.
“Wake up—this is all your fault; you’re to blame!”

The professor’s face just kept on smiling, so they left for town
and he snoozed in the fixed bed while the house burned down.

It rained for three weeks without a pause but he did not so much as start.
Amid the ruins the blackened bed molded, mossed, rotted and fell apart.

At last the sun came out and his granddaughter woke him to gave him some tea;
and the confused old professor, though wet through, was as happy as he could be.

The Fishing of the Professor

The professor could not be seen, only piles of twine;
“What’s that?” asked the fisherman. The reply: “My handline.”

“What’s your bait?” “A strand of my granddaughter’s hair.”
“It won’t work,” declared the fisherman. “It’s too fair.”

“My granddaughter’s hairs have caught many a swordfish.
Your flies only catch minnows, and none that are biggish.”

They went together through the woods to the brook.
One tied on his fly; the other, a hair on his hook.

The professor let out his line, mile after mile
At last the fisherman said, with a bit of a smile,

“If you let out much more, you’ll be fishing in the sea.”
Then, “Argh! Another little minnow. Dirge-dump! Gee!

“Those’re all I’ve caught; three hundred nineteen—”
“Good,” said the professor, “my bait has been seen.”

He began yanking it in. “For my kind of bait,
the fish don’t hit, so you don’t have to wait.”

Soon after, the creek water began to rise;
it came up until it enveloped their thighs.

The fisherman, much alarmed, cried out in dismay.
The prof said, “It’s only my fish swimming this way.”

Nearly blocking the stream, it came into view,
bigger than the fisherman’s minnows, all 562.

“What is that fish?”—“I am sure that you know.
It’s a sort of shark that died out long ago.”

The fisherman replied in a voice much too loud—
the type of voice that is likely to gather a crowd—

“I challenge you to a duel with a cowboy friend of mine,
one who’ll turn you to mincemeat and feed you to swine.”

One—they stood at opposite—two—ends of the street—three.
The cowboy’s gun was halfway up when—bang-kablammy!

—it blew up. The professor hadn’t brought his gun;
he explained very carefully why he didn’t need one:

“Do not worry. I’ll fire tomorrow. My bullet is fast:
when I shoot it, it flies swiftly back into the past.”

The fisherman and the cowboy went together to the old bar.
It’s said that between them they downed a good deal of tar.

Dove Wings in the Trash Bin

We found a dove standing behind some yucca, shriveled, starved.
His blah eyes showed little life, only the last three dry kernels on a corncob.
I try to imagine hunger: the blurry world is a jerking, swirling dream
and my head goes thud-thud-thud while I double up as a wrathful belly orders
Food. No, I can't guess. Thank God we had our shotguns. You need a lot of faith
to look at something soft your hand enfolds that is hungry and can't fly.

The boy that can't walk reminded me of the bird that couldn't fly.
He was born too young, so the doctors advised, Let him starve.
But his parents loved him, and they'd professed the faith;
They said, It's not a crime to be no bigger than a corncob.
The doctors' wooden faces meant they wouldn't give the help that was in order
Yet his parents knew killing their son wouldn't kill the dream.

I wonder if he walks in his dreams.
In mine I run and fight and fly.
A guy does what he wants like giving the waitress his order
or getting into high school, I always figured, and won't starve.
It's an empty word. But here the exams mock my friends' brains as corncobs.
Will I still call not bragging "humility" when I test with no need for faith?

...and call giving thanks without gratefulness "faith"?
Only words...the time when waking was dreaming,
though hoary heads all around me were alive then. They lived on corncobs.
Sometimes sparse yellow teeth guillotined the squirming, muddy larva of a dragonfly
Stomachs that rejected bugs and wood could only starve.
Vegetables and meat were only for the man who gave the crippling order.

There's a man here whose words come out in any order
He says he's the one who gave the command. He says so with faith.
He comes often to our house—being shunned has left him starved:
no one wants to be around a thing that lives a dream,
stinking, with clothes never free from flies.
He had a good job, but then his brain became a corncob.

There's the boy, with his gun, harmless as a corncob.
He sits on his car and shoots each of us in order.
His cousin, evading invisible bullets with giggles, flies
right by him, like a swallow. I have faith
that she doesn't understand, not even when she dreams,
and that she hasn't any idea she's watching him starve.

Father, smile at him by injecting him with faith wilder than any dream
to keep him from starving for joy and counting himself a corncob
I sign your Son's name to my words: order him to walk—so his heart will fly.

Mirrors Make the Strongest Walls

Your humanness shimmers and trembles
like the surface of the well's clear water
that hides itself in its own gentle darkness
as I lie in the sun, trying to see beyond my own reflection,
a skin I must pierce through
to send my soul diving into the warm depths.

My dusty fingers poke into the water,
groping for something to cling to,
something fixed in you to hold.
And there is my face again,
lifting with the waves.

As I pull my hand back
the droplets fall like tears
because tears are the pieces of a soul.

How can I know you from the inside?
How can I learn more than solid, static facts,
like the rocks that make the walls of the well,
and hold moving liquid in my leaky hands?

You are Dangerous

"[Fangorn] often comes here, especially when his mind is uneasy, and rumours of the world outside trouble him. I saw him four days ago striding among the trees, and I think he saw me, for he paused; but I did not speak...and he did not speak either, nor call my name."
"Perhaps he also thought that you were Saruman," said Gimli. "But you speak of him as if he was a friend. I thought Fangorn was dangerous."
"Dangerous!" cried Gandalf. "And so am I, very dangerous...And Aragorn is dangerous, and Legolas is dangerous. You are beset with dangers, Gimli son of Gloin; for you are dangerous yourself, in your own fashion."—J.R.R. Tolkien

People who carry wands and battle-axes are not to be messed with. It's also a good idea not to mess with politicians, tycoons and football players. But we are beset with more dangers than that, for ordinary people are dangerous, in their own fashion. Even children have an ability to hurt or heal; the antics of a carefree child can do wonders for a parent consumed by anxiety about the future. In C.S. Lewis' Till We Have Faces, the repercussions of Orual's actions reverberate among both men and the gods—before she has any political power. She is puissant because her life is intertwined with the lives of other people, especially with the lives of her sisters.

When two people interact, their souls brush together and, many times, begin to interlock. Relating involves submission to an outside influence, even if a weak one; it involves a making bare or vulnerable some part of the being of both parties. This gives humans many kinds of power over each other. All humans can love or hate. Even small demonstrations of affection—a smile, a wave, an arm around the shoulder, a few simple kind words—can have great impact. I once heard one of my sisters crying bitterly in her room. I went in; she was lying face down, weeping into her pillow. I laid my hand on her back, trying vainly to think of some appropriate words. Presently, her sobbing subsided. My hand was a conduit of my love to her, a love which had a power I had not guessed at.

Many other types of power are inherent to humanness. We can shock, as films often do; we can advice and persuade: "But Brutus is an honorable man!" We can manipulate the emotions of others, as with the popular boy who flirts with girls he cares nothing for. We can teach by example—the most effective of didactic methods. In a very few words, we can change someone's opinion of his friend. An enthusiastic, "I love Chris," can drastically shape someone's opinion of Chris, as can "Did you know he eats his boogers?" We can give a girl flowers, or vandalize her car. Sex can be the sealing act of love—when used as God would have it—or cause immense destruction in the lives of those involved, and in the lives of their families and friends. Those with a talent in art or music can make us gawk, or dance, or cry—even without the talent of Dürer or Mendelssohn. Perhaps the greatest of human powers is prayer, a petition for intervention by the greatest of powers. Power is available even to the weak.

Jean-Paul Sartre, in his early philosophy as expressed in Being and Nothingness, held that love was self-contradictory. I object to Sartre's view of love, but the love of a fallen being does have an inherent inconsistency. For love involves the desire to draw close to, and once a fallen being has drawn close to its beloved, it will inevitably damage it; but surely to love is to wish the best for the beloved! We must be struck with a terror of damaging that which we love, for even without prowess, we have power. And we must be even more afraid of damaging that which we do not love, for it is that which we do not love that we are most likely to destroy without conscious intention.

We must also be struck with our potential for good—a potential we underestimate. Your smiles, your patience with the obnoxiousness of another, and underlying it all, your love are of much greater value than you suppose. Remember that a greater return is demanded of him who is given five talents than of him who is given two. A young man once had a long talk with his teacher after class. As he walked home, he cried, though his teacher had given him high compliments. He cried because he saw his own wasted potential. He saw that he had spent his strength in frivolity and sin and cried because he feared the responsibility that came with the blessings given to him.

On my first day of "Invitation to the Humanities," Dr. Eric M— gave a challenge to the class. He told us, "You are weapons of either good or evil. There is no neutral position. Which will you be?"

The Sweetness of Humility

"What kind of tree is that?" I asked my Chinese friend Jerry. The name he used had a familiar sound, but I couldn't remember what it meant. "Is the fruit edible?" I asked.

"Yes," he said, "But don't eat it; it isn't ripe."

"I'm going to eat some," I said, "Just to figure out what it is."

"Don't."

"Why not? Is it poisonous?"

"No, but it is incredibly bitter."

I plucked one of the hard green fruits and bit into it anyway—and immediately spewed it out in disgust. It was more bitter than anything I had ever eaten. It was a long time before I forgot the Chinese word for walnut.

Pride is as acrid as a green walnut. I have heard from a young age that I should forsake pride, but my sinfulness is such that I do not begin to relinquish a sin until I repulsed by it. Over the past several months I have tasted pride's acerbic flavor, and now I hate it—and as I result, I also love humility and its sweetness.

Indeed, humility is sweet. A scene from C.S. Lewis' Perelandra makes a profound comment on the nature of humility by picturing the innocence of the Green Lady:

[The Green Lady] stared for quite an appreciable time [into the mirror] without apparently making anything of it. Then she started back with a cry and covered her face...

"Oh—oh," she cried. "What is it? I saw a face."

"Only your own face, beautiful one," said the Un-man.

"I know," said the Lady, still averting her eyes from the mirror. "My face—out there—looking at me. Am I growing older or is it something else? I feel...I feel...my heart is beating too hard. I am not warm." (116)

"That thing" (she pointed at the mirror) "is me and not me."

"But if you do not look you will never know how beautiful you are."

"It comes into my mind, Stranger," she answered, "that a fruit does not eat itself, and a man cannot be together with himself." (117)

The Green Lady's beauty was not for herself: it was for the King. While she must have always been conscious of her own beauty in a vague way, she did not even know what she looked like. We speak of someone being "stuck on himself"; the Green Lady was stuck on someone else. Here is humility, not as a dry "spiritual" attribute, but as a charming addition to the Lady's physical beauty. The Apostle Peter understood this well.

Don't be concerned about the outward beauty that depends on fancy hairstyles, expensive jewelry, or beautiful clothes. You should be known for the beauty that comes from within, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is so precious to God. (1 Peter 3:3-4)

Humility is also becoming to men. Once an unusually intelligent linguist was explaining some of the peculiarities of the Thai counting system to my father, my brother and me. He mentioned some of the speculations that certain linguists had relating to the subject, and then added, "But that doesn't really matter to us, does it." His apparent lack of interest in the details of the linguistic speculations demonstrated that he had told us this for our own interest and not to flaunt his superior knowledge, while his warm smile and use of the word "us" created an aura of camaraderie. He regularly spoke in this manner, and I loved him for it and respected him far more than if he had used his knowledge to diminish me.

Another example of sweet humility is to be found in Proverbs 30, where Agur son of Jakeh writes:

I am weary, O God; I am weary and worn out, O God. I am too ignorant to be human, and I lack common sense. I have not mastered human wisdom, nor do I know the Holy One.

Who but God goes up to heaven and comes back down? Who holds the wind in his fists? Who wraps up the oceans in his cloak? Who has created the whole wide world? What is his name—and his son's name? Tell me if you know! (1-4)

Here is profound humility. Not only does Agur not claim to understand the wisdom of God, he cries out that he has not even mastered common sense and human wisdom! As his oracle continues, it becomes apparent that he does have some wisdom to share. But even his wisdom is sometimes expressed in terms of things he does not understand (see verse 18).

One of the sweetest things about humility is its accompanying confidence. In an ironic paradox, pride, which presents itself as strong and confident, has a close relationship to insecurity, while humility, which overlooks itself, can be built only on an inner confidence. Insecurity tells a person his current size is unsatisfactory and that he has to inflate himself, whereas a person who is confident—that is, someone who trusts in God, for trust in anything else is false confidence—is able to honestly and sorrowfully admit his own faults. A humble person feels no need to respond in kind to deflating remarks because he has no pockets of hot air puffing him beyond his real size.

If pride is a green walnut, the bitterest taste ever to touch my tongue, humility is a honeycomb, the sweetest of all flavors.

Thoughts from an Unsuccessful Elk Hunter

Seeing a live, wild animal close up in the woods without being seen is strange and wonderful. Elk droppings, still wet through, on the path ahead make elk seem real in a way, but seeing the ruddy, course hair and muscular sides of an elk brings that feeling to a new level. Knowing elk exist and inhabit the woods you are in is dull compared to watching an animal that can with dignity cover two miles of broken terrain in a few minutes walk calmly past not thirty yards away.

As a boy I would often try to sneak up on birds. And though the birds I was approaching often lived in neighborhoods or parks and were half tame, I had only tried it a few times before I became convinced that even a half-tame animal will only be approached on its own terms. So it thrills me to approach a wild animal like a deer or coyote on my terms.

We value things more when we realize that they could slip away at any time. When a mother jerks her son out of the road as a bus roars by, she gasps and hugs him for a moment before she can bring herself to reprimand him. She realizes how he could have been gone instantly, and that makes him seem the more precious. Seeing a deer walk by is a fleeting experience. Nothing is holding the deer near to you; it could slip away at any time, so seeing the deer is the more precious.

To the man stalking in the woods, an elk is a phantom that leaves behind a lot of sign but has no physical presence. Trees in all directions point up, but there is nothing between them. A wood is like the landscape of the moon. On the moon, stones are strewn about, but nothing is there. In the woods, hoof marks are imprinted deep in the mud, but they are left by a creature of ether. There is “only a host of phantom listeners”* in the empty woods that tease a man’s imagination and subconsciously convince him that nothing is there.

So when a deer moves through the empty woods not thirty yards away, the woodsmen is struck simultaneously by how ordinary the deer is and by how outrageous it is that the deer is walking calmly in front of him as if he were the vapor. The deer is opaque, gray like a rock. It makes sound; it takes up space. It is ordinary.

And yet electric. Its own demeanor is demure, but the woodsman feels the wonder of it in every part of his tingling body. Something far off has abruptly drawn near. Seeing it is like being hit by lightning. There is no warning, the shock is intense, and then it is gone.

It is easy for someone who enjoys animals to wonder why a hunter would want to go out and kill a living creature. A common misconception is that hunters are sadists who enjoy destruction. But as a man who belongs to the world cannot understand the joys of knowing God, a man who has not been hunting cannot know its thrills. Someone may have a lot of fun playing with his dog or riding his horse, but I cannot believe he enjoys his animals as much as a hunter enjoys the wild creatures he sees.

*From Walter de la Mare’s poem The Listeners.

Bulls in the Ruts

Most hunters have a close association in their minds between “radical insanity” and “bulls in the rut.” Consequently, if anyone had seen Nick G—— and me four-wheeling away from our elk hunting camp this year—no one did, because everyone else had already hightailed it out of the place—they would likely have mistaken us for bulls in the rut. And they would have been right, in a way; for much of the journey back to the civilized world (the part of the world where roads are differentiated from roller coasters) we were stuck in eight-inch-deep ruts.

There were three of us elk in the pickup—Nick in the driver’s seat, Muni Beduhin in the passenger’s and a cow in two coolers. The bed of the truck and the trailer were stuffed full with a wall tent, a large roll of carpeting, a stove with a grill, bottles of propane, a water heater, two cots, four sleeping bags, bins of clothes, bins of cooking utensils, coolers of food and many other articles. After we got out of the backwoods onto the open highway, we topped out at 30 mph over a 65 mph pass. It should not be hard to understand that while we were still where the character of the road meant that 15 mph was closer to demolition than titillation, we didn’t float over the mud.

The mud, resulting from several inches of snow that night and morning, was closer to fish slime than something made of dirt. Driving that road when it was mostly dry wasn’t for wimps. The ruts are deep, the mud holes are numerous, and the rocks embedded in the road are large. I was glad Nick was driving now that the road had confused itself with a slough.

We had chains on all four tires, which was helpful for pulling ourselves forward—and backward the time when we almost fell into a deep hole—but we had no side-to-side traction. The trailer was fishtailing behind us, jerking us all over the road as we remarked on how hard it was to stay out of the ruts. When we reached the top of a hill, the road curved quickly to the right. The truck, like a belligerent ox, plowed straight ahead. The drop-off was steep. Considering that our mini-caravan had been obeying Nick’s steering about as well as most of us live out our doctrine, it was not surprising that Nick was hollering as he steered wildly to the right. “Nice ruts!” he cried. “Ruts are wonderful! I want to be in them!”

We hadn’t learned our lesson completely, though. As we approached “The Pond,” Nick pulled us out of the ruts again, in attempt to escape the worst of that worst of mud holes. But once again the truck refused to turn, and Nick barely got us stopped. Six more inches and we would have been nose-down in a deep hole. We backed up and resigned ourselves to going through The Pond in the ruts. However, someone had put aspen logs at the bottom of it for traction, and our left front tire picked one up and jammed it between our axle, bumper and steering shaft. It took the bow saw to get us out of that mud hole.

After that we stayed in the ruts, and discovered an unexpected perk of doing so. I was looking out the window when Nick said, “I don’t even bother to steer anymore.” His right hand was resting on the gear shift and his left elbow was sitting on the open window. The wheel was turning according to the ruts as we went down the winding road.

I don’t know whether or not it is advisable to hunt the rut, but it is definitely advisable to drive in it when you are going over a slick, three-dimensional road with an elk and a hunting camp in tow. Not going over any cliffs is more important than not pushing logs down the road ahead of you.

End of the Evening

The sun is falling away now

and as the valley is slowly torn from its clutching fingers
it leaves scratches of flame in the clouds

It clings

—and falls away



The valley is all sprinkled with ash.
The coals on the peaks burn out:
the day dies

One time, reading through Ezekiel, I got to the last part and bogged down. I decided to draw a diagram of the Temple as I read the description of it to help me pay attention and understand what I was reading. That proved to be beyond my meager capabilities, but did draw the east gate (the gates were identical) on a vector-based drawing program in Windows 98 (Micrographics Draw). Here are the results; hopefully you will find them helpful.

The view is from above. You might go back and read the text as you look at it to fully understand it. There are several versions of the drawing to flesh it out.

Location: Eze 40-48 (no physical location actualized that I know of)

The East Gateway (from above, plain)

The East Gateway (from above with labels)

The East Gateway (from above with measurements)

Fireworks

Spring lit the wick
        and the flame crawled
        up! and up!
The fireworks blew up quick
        I could almost hear the
        pop! pop!

They exploded in yellow,
        purple, orange, pink,
        white, blue, and
        red! so red!

nature’s fireworks flared. Mellow,
        longer-lived,
        sweet-smelling—
        and instead of burned paper,
                        the product was berries overhead

Snow

Snow,
like grace,
falls from heaven

and covers the sin-scarred world
like a blanket of righteousness.


But soon it melts
to black sludge

Because men,
like fish,
wear a layer of slime.

Milton's Fiery Language

...Instead of Fruit Chew’d Bitter Ashes, Which th’Offended Taste with Spattering Noise Rejected...

John Milton may have had bad eyes, but his tongue and ears displayed masterful skill. The flames of his passionate language still leap from the page more than three hundred years later, as in this passage from Paradise Lost about how God tormented the demons as they tried to applaud after Satan bragged to them about his success in tempting man (Book X, lines 545-562) :

...Thus was th’applause they meant,

Turn’d to exploding hiss, triumph to shame

Cast on themselves from their own mouths. There stood

A Grove hard by, sprung up with this their change,

His will who reigns above, to aggravate

Their penance, laden with fair Fruit, like that

Which grew in Paradise, the bait of Eve

Us’d by the Tempter: on that prospect strange

Their earnest eyes they fix’d, imagining

For one forbidden Tree a multitude

Now ris’s, to work them further woe or shame;

Yet parcht with scalding thirst and hunger fierce,

Though to delude them sent, could not abstain,

But on they roll’d in heaps, and up the Trees

Climbing, sat thicker than the snaky locks

That curl’d Megaera: greedily they pluck’d

The Fruitage fair to sight, like that which grew

Near the bituminous Lake where Sodom flam’d....

Had I written this, no one would bother to read it:

They meant to applaud, but instead, they hissed very loudly! They had been feeling triumphant, but now they felt embarrassed, because the hissing had come from their own mouths.

There was a grove nearby, which grew up when they changed into snakes...

Unlike mine, Milton’s language is concise. The way he phrased his sentences allowed him to say a lot with few words. He rarely used more than one adjective or adverb per word, often opting to let the word fend for itself. Consequently, his verse is strong, like lemon juice concentrate.

The few words he did use are robust with energy. They are strong enough to carry the weight of the epic without assistance. He choose “stood” over “was,” “sprung up” rather than “grown up”; even “hard by” instead of dull-sounding “nearby.”

Milton was a painter. With a small number of strokes, he could conjure up entire scenes full of sensory detail. The reader can’t help but envision the fabulous events Milton describes in concrete detail. Instead of saying, “laden with fair fruit like the fruit of the Tree of Life,” Milton packed in a verb, a strong noun, and a haunting phrase, “the bait of Eve”—as if Eve were an animal baited by a demon hunter. Instead of saying simply, “the Fruitage fair to sight, like that which grew near Sodom,” he includes a grimy lake; moreover, Sodom doesn’t sit vague and dull—it burns. Milton rendered this clause so successfully that he created an aura of Hell, without explicitly reminding us where the scene in question was taking place.

Writing was the art that allowed this blind man to paint brilliant scenes, which like the picture of the Dawntreader in CS Lewis’ book, start to move when one looks at them, and are likely to swallow one up into the extraordinary story they comprise.

A Professor No More, The Professor Yet

They were building a new building. As they had built the last,
They had often seen him give a—well, a look as he passed.

The principal of the college thought building much fun—
Until the professor asked quietly, “Hmm. Another one?”

The principal caught his breath, knowing what was meant. “You cannot pass!
By the secret flames, if you go now, who will teach next week’s class?”

With a kind smile, the reply: “Your buildings. But I won’t stay.”
And lifting off his professor’s hat, he threw it a very long way.

The principal tried to block the professor’s perilous path,
but the gentle professor quickly gave him some math.

Then slowly and silently walked to the wall.
The other looked up and croaked out a call

but the professor went over. It was not the glass on top
that made the principal, distrot, whisper, “Please stop.”

They hired trackers who sought him with hounds,
but the clever old professor was not to be found.

The principal rushed to the prof’s house and banged on the door.
A little girl answered, with a sweet, “What’s the pounding for?”

Unused to being spoken to so, he flushed thuroly red.
The shame cut so deep he then would have fled,

but she said softly, “If you are looking for my grandpa, he is here.”
He was aghast at his own odious response, which was: “Oh dear.”

The prof was in the kitchen, sleeping on (what the girl called) the picnic table.
The principal tried to say “Hi.” Instead came, “Um, Mr. Mentally Unstable—”

“That’s so; I never have kept horses in my brain.
The weight is likely to cause a good deal of pain.

“One day an obnoxious reduced my granddaughter to tears,
so I stuffed equines into his head till he bled thru his ears.”

Involuntarily the principal offered, “Is that story true?”
Not even looking. The girl said, “He made it for you.”

Again accidentally—“Hey, you can’t scare me, dude.”
“What?”—a hint of surprised anger. “Were you rude?”

Still looking away, the prof wrote, “Granted: permission to go out.”
Mission forgotten, the principal ran, barely swallowing a startled shout.

He consoled himself: “He’ll be back; he must turn a resignation in.”
But that was that. The professor never set foot on the campus again.

The Dying Grandfather

Like a man who smells a storm
he could feel the breath of death’s yawning gullet—
a wind like a blade of ice that slashed through his dirty jacket
and left him coughing up blood and clinging to his daughter-in-law,
withering and rotting like a fig,
softening and crumbling like a fallen aspen,
his cloudy eyes and loose face
showing a despair too strong to brave,
and a man too weak to scream.