“I will put chaos into fourteen lines
And keep him there; and let him thence escape
if he be lucky. Let him twist and ape
Fire , flood and demon. His adroit designs
Will strain to nothing in the strict confines
Of this sweet order, where, in pious rape
I hold his essence and amorphous shape
Till he with Order mingles and combines.
Past are the hours, the years of our duress,
His arrogance, our awful servitude—
I have him. He is nothing more nor less
Than something simple not yet understood.
I shall not even force him to confess
Or answer. I will only make him good. “
—Edna St Vincent Millay
I have always loved this poem, it gives me the same “holy shiver” as the KJV “I will not let thee go, except thou bless me” —in fact I think this sonnet is or can be, a poetic rendering of Jacob’s wrestling match at the Ford of Jabbuk.
Scrawny little Jake lies in wait for the protean water deity, and, incredibly, beats it to a draw, holding on like a bulldog until he wrings a benison from it: a name: “he who wrestles with a god”. But then Jacob tries to “force” the deity to “confess”; he asks it its name, which it declines to give. The poet says she won’t even bother with that, she will just subdue, tame, the entity.
This sonnet is running through my head all the time now as we await Trump’s inauguration. I think it’s the tone of confident strength the voice of a master.
Who can subdue chaos, who would even entertain the presumption to try?
Me, the poet! says Millay: “I will” , “I hold his essence”, “I have him!”
The feeling I have is that at last, on Jan 20, we will be getting our heads above a roiling sea of political hysteria and civil disorder. It is an ungovernable energy which has assumed myriad forms in the last few years: rioting, the fall of our country’s border, the use of governmental machinery in the service of persecution and imprisonment, virulent hatred poisoning our society from the household level on up.
But against all odds, or so it seemed, we have selected and we will acclaim our champion! Can he harness and subdue the Chaos to which we’ve been in thrall, can he redirect its misguided energy into joining forces with the “sweet order”, our civil order, which has distinguished our country and made it a dreamed-of destination for the whole world?
When I hear Trump speak since November, I think “He wills it!” “the cause is in my will”, as Julius Caesar says in the eponymous play.
One lone human CAN do such things: wrestle an ungovernable force into submission, if he or she have “courage equal to desire”: witness Jacob’s victory, Millay’s masterful sonnet.
The hope, the hope! Bliss and terror in one! But Trump loves America, I’m sure of that. Is there any other person who would or could have endured what he has? It must be love! And as Shakespeare has Romeo say, resolving to risk his life to see his lover:
“And what love CAN do, that dares love attempt!”