Editor’s Note: A splendid morning on The Farm and down on Marlow’s Coastal Empire. There is a lot going on, since our Congress needs to take a break while confronting the assorted emergencies they were elected to solve. Marlow takes a moment to help explain it to those of us who are a little confused by it all.

• Vic

Old-Splaining

We old salts no longer swagger but accept our and the world’s flaws. We carry the world in our bellies. That took us tens of millions of minutes of striving for — they think it takes 24 hours.

As the blind old poet Milton sorta said:

Should intermitted vengeance arm again
His red right hand to plague us? What if all
Her stores were opened, and this firmament
Of Hell should spout her cataracts of fire,

This is what I say:

Please forgive us (bad eyes make it impossible to see)
If we appear unkind (bad ears make it impossible to know)
But all young fools tell us
It’s all in our minds

Down in the meadow
The old lion stirs
We put our paw ‘cross our mouth
We got no use for words

Poor young fools
With their handfuls of cell glow
Poor young fools
Got no way to know

Think they’ve got us eating
They’ve got us eating
They’ve got us eating
Right out of their hands

We mean them no harm (well, that’s impossible to say)
When we tell ‘em they’re blind (maybe that’s possible to know)
Give these suckers an even break
They’ll lose it all, every time

The airborne black crows circle
Over the barren fields
The jasmine vines hang harmlessly
And the old lion yields

On the walls will be written in victim blood
(Police won’t investigate due to tremendous cost)
On the house walls will be written “Red right hand”

That, the internet says, is from “Paradise Lost”

Just old-splaining (not justifying, let alone, representing, mind you) the ways of the gods to man. For as wolves we shall succeed for teachers, heinous wolves, for whom all of Heaven’s mysteries to our own vile ends shall turn, not of lucre and ambition, but for the truth without ideology, superstition, and traditions taint. We will leave accountings only in written records pure. By thought not spirit to be understood.

Lastly, we hope they remember that old John also said, “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven” as well as being wary of following “Better to reign in Hell, than to serve in Heaven.”

Paradise rests in the balance.

.
American Paradise

Copyright © 1667 John Milton & 2021 From My Isle Seat
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