Patient Malice (bis)

Patient Malice  (Newtonian version)

Ferocious, tenacious

(ferox,       tenax)

Gravity simply will have

this delicate Dresden china figurine --

a milkmaid and her shepherd-swain.

Weeks, months pass   immobilely,

the sweethearts oblivious in chaste serenity,

while Gravity in its grotto

grimly grimaces and grins.

Then one day, an errant elbow, and --

There, I’ve got it!

-- And if I can’t purely have it

(growls Gravity  at the center of the Earth)

then neither shall you ever have it back

except in fragments.

~

Patient Malice  (Miltonian version)

For as grim Gravity  lowly lurks and lingers

in the depths of his potential-energy pit,

to pull our  each frail  cherished objects

to smash them all to fragments,

so too does Satan  watch and wait

in his fuliginous  and smoky pit,

for some         slip,         some

tilt or tip  of the moral compass,

to grab us  toppling, tumbling,

falling, fumbling

to the heart of his black embrace.