That the poem is derived from an ancient Celtic ritual which had also been known among the Minoans, as is evident because of the existence of certain similar configurations of rocks which are assumed to be numinous, ought tell us that we are not going to be able to discount the importance of the body as well as the mind in their magical invocations. A bodily event was treated as a component, regarded as a result, of a mental process.
Poetry is founded on the idea that words are magic. The power of magic is to transform one thing into another, to cross boundaries that cannot be crossed. Words can have the weight and the force of stones. The discipline of poetry is alchemical. That's why Shakespeare makes Prospero, who is really a poet, into a necromancer.
He was beautiful. I was staring at him. I heard everything he said. To me what was funny was that for all he was saying about connecting to the body through words, for me, right there, words were a barrier to that. His words were not an abracadabra but a wall, a wall made of stones. His words defined him as the teacher and me as the student, and they served as the barrier social custom had erected.
He was a teacher. He got paid to talk. But I wanted to touch him. I wanted to cross the barrier.
I watched his chest as he gestured and prowled in front of the room. Could it be possible that he was not aware of the effect it would have to have when he came to class in a t-shirt and cargo pants that clung to his thighs, and leather sandals that showed off his strong, handsomely-shaped feet?
It was actually pretty reasonable that he was dressed the way he was. Most of the class was even more informal than he was. I was barefoot and only had on short cutaway jeans and a bright yellow tank top that hardly reached to the top of my shorts, just giving a glimpse now and then of my nice, flat, tan belly. It was summer session, ninety three degrees outside, no air-conditioning inside the old Gothic Quad buildings.
We would all have liked to be at the lake.
But still.
Jimmy! he said.
I did a double take and pointed at myself.
Yes, you, he smiled. It was kindly.
Wake up, he said, and it sounded loving, like a mother gently calling her baby back from sleep.
I am awake, I said.
Good, he said.
You were talking about boundaries that can't be crossed.
He nodded, grinning.
These encounters had actually grown familiar and everyone else in the class always perked up when they occurred.
What do you do if you have to cross that boundary because it's not really a boundary?
As I was repeating What do you do? with a belligerence in my voice that I had not known would be there, the bell rang that ended the class.
Without missing a beat, he said, You come see me after class.
Not in here, he said, after everyone else had filed out, and indicated with a nod of his head that we should walk into the faculty garden.
He turned the lock in the wrought iron gate with a key, swung the tall gate open, ushered me inside and closed the gate behind us. It gave a solid click when it was shut. He led me along winding pebble paths and we somehow wandered to a pond laid out in what seemed to be the center of a maze. We were the only ones in the garden.
Where we sat under a stately oak tree, it was cool, despite the heat.
It was a marble bench we sat on looking at the pond, but it felt like cushioned silk. I breathed deeply. Then I brought my feet up and set them under me. I sat quietly looking at the pond, controlling my confusion by keeping still.
I knew I could not hold out for long and I was waiting to see exactly what I would do.
But I did not have to wait, for he gently took hold of my neck with his open palm.
Which boundary? he said, looking into my eyes and smiling before he touched his lips to mine with the assurance of his right to.
And he did have a right to. My desire for him gave him that right.
I yielded to his kiss, but not passively. I made him yield to mine. We both had conquered. And we both had been defeated. We struggled together, each the mountain the other struggled to climb.
We stood and he pressed himself to me. The boundary that divided us dissolved and lactescent green waves of concave ocean water broke on an invisible shore.
I want my master to be my strength, not my weakness, I said to him with tears flooding my eyes despite myself.
He struck me again.
I want my master to be someone who alleviates my suffering, not who inflicts it on me.
Again his palm burned across my cheek.
I don't want this, I said sobbing as I haven't sobbed since I was abandoned by my mother outside the monstrous doors of my first school.
I don't, I repeated, nearly hysterical, feeling the passion of wanting something impossible rising up within me and threatening to strangle me if I did not throw it off with these violent upheavals of my body.
He was not deterred. He maintained his impassivity. The muscles bundled in his arm and on his naked chest as he yet again drew himself to scorch my cheek again.
I fell to the floor clutching my knees.
With the toe of his boot he touched my naked nipple and moved me from my side onto my back where I lay after he left, still clutching my knees.
He took me to bed and held me closely and kissed my eyelids and tasted the salt of my tears as I continued to weep.
He held me, and I wept.
I'm sorry, I said.
For what? he asked, as if there were nothing he could think of for me to be sorry for.
For making you go so much against your own nature.
Don't be so sure it isn't my nature, he laughed.
I know, I said. You were good. That's why I'm sorry, making you bring out that part of yourself.
You don't like to be punished, he said. I could see that. You were forcing yourself.
I wasn't forcing myself too much.
In the morning, I snuggled up to him.
I don't think I want to do that again.
We don't have to, he said.
I want to be held in the arms of the man I love, not beaten by a man who will not love me but refuses to let go of me.
Reasonable, he said.
You think so? I said.
Definitely, he said stroking my hair.
I wrapped myself in the heat of his body.
Get up and make some coffee the way I like it, he said playfully pushing me away and out of bed.
Yes, sir, I said laughing and pulled a pair of black silky mini-boxers over my butt.
The way he liked it was Greek, strong, burning, and sugary.
We had our coffee that morning in his apartment overlooking the faculty garden. It was the end of September and he was teaching a Milton seminar I sat in on but did not take for credit. I guess that barrier was still up that created the teacher student divide. I'd just made it over to the other side of it.
Of man's first dis-obedience. That's what you'd guess is the theme. There it is in the first line: Of man's first disobedience. Disobedience! But that's not the theme. Obedience is the theme. And the consequences of falling away from obedience. But Milton is a renaissance poet, an intellectual, a revolutionary, a Christian Puritan, and a man who had several wives and wrote an elaborate treaty defending the right to divorce. So it is not obvious what obedience or disobedience really means to him.
The room was so full that kids were even sitting on the window sills and the floor. It was obviously more work for him when it came time to read papers and correct the (pro-forma) tests he gave, but that did not seem to bother him and he never limited enrollment in his classes. And it was not, as some of his colleagues suggested because he gave high grades that his lectures were jammed, but because of who he was, because of the excitement of the show he put on.
The temperature had fallen after a short recapitulation of summer, and it was chilly and gray out and the leaves on the trees looked like they knew it was time for them to start falling.
Look how the line ends: Of man's first disobedience and the fruit^Åbut not the fruit of disobedience, not the consequences of disobedience. That's not what he's focusing on. It's the fruit of that forbidden tree. It's the alluring object that interests him, figuring out just what the allure is. And it turns out in Book Nine that the allure is disobedience itself.
The bell rang, but no one moved.
It's ok, he said, smiling, shaking his head a little as if he'd been startled out of sleep. More next time.
I waited by the stairwell. He knew I'd be there. He always had a bunch of students around his desk after class. I was ok with that. I had no right not to be. I sat on the top step. There was enough light coming through the huge Gothic window for me to read. I was into the third volume of Mercy of a Rude Stream: From Bondage no less!
Although I often felt secure in his love and content to admire him and care for him, I still experienced waves of desire for punishment.
Snow fell heavily the week after Thanksgiving and we took the railroad into the city and spent the afternoon ice skating in Central Park.
I am not bad on skates. But he is grace on ice. He is an ice-dancer. And when he took me in his arms and swung me around in a waltz, some his grace entered into me, and we turned and whirled and swirled in such wonderful arcs that the other skaters made room for us and watched until we broke apart except for holding hands and skated together, glowing.
They clapped and we bowed our heads a bit and kept on skating.
That evening I was standing by the French window in his living room looking out over the faculty gardens, now snow covered undulations sparkling beneath the amber glow of the nineteenth-century lampposts that punctuated its paths.
Jed, I murmured turning from the window.
He looked up from his desk and when our eyes met, I knew he understood what had passed through me.
Everybody is looking at us, I said. My eyes were lowered as I spoke and I did not dare to look around the room but I knew it was so.
Everyone is looking at us.
He lifted the short thin chain that dangled from a tiny ring that pierced my nipple and very gently pulled on it, pulling me towards him. I followed where he pulled and was spared the pain of resistance.
But I did not want to resist. When he kissed me I closed my eyes and relaxed and did not care what anyone else in the bar thought or saw or felt. In fact they did not exist. I moved towards him from inside my self. I felt his strong palm and long fingers holding my bare back. I tore at the sleeves of his motorcycle jacket.
There, he said. We've begun. Now lick my boots.
I knelt in front of him and touched my lips to the leather instep and felt myself transcendent through obedience and liberated by slavery.
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