More on: temptation

this should be no wilderness

to be lost in

IN A SCENE from book 4 of Milton’s Paradise Lost, Adam and Eve talk one evening of the glories of Eden and their unmerited free creation by God, unaware that they are being watched by Satan. This little scene takes place shortly after Satan’s shape-shifting arrival in Eden and serves as a kind of foreshadowing…

She is so beautiful, it is enough— her skin like milk, nipples like cherries, her hair a long night without stars. I find irresistible the blue vein pulsing above her left ankle, the green of those intelligent eyes. Everything she wants, I want, and though my mind is cleaved, my full heart can only rejoice.…

If Penetrated by Light: Five Poets Consider the Darkness The Fortieth Day by Kazim Ali (BOA Editions, 2008) Astonishment: Selected Poems of Anna Kamienska ——-Translated by Grazyna Drabik and David Curzon (Paraclete Press, 2007) The Alphabet in the Park: Selected Poems of Adélia Prado ——-Translated by Ellen Watson (Wesleyan University Press, 1990) Hovering at a…

Psalm Ghazal I   Touch the cheek of a child and God comes in through the fingers. Open your mouth, and the devil comes in or the devil goes out. Flatter with your tongue the wine and then the hollow inside my hip. At the request of your lips, my mourning turns to dancing. Only…