From "Poems from the Island" | Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University

~~~ Paradise ~~~

[Originally published in The New York Times]

<img src="/sdmpubfiles/cckimages/page/para-ship.jpg" border="1"> <table>
<tbody><tr>
<td>
Its vanished trees once pandered in whispers

to the last and greatest of all human dreams.

— F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
 
</center>

1. The Captain

Damn it! there beaconed a new light

amid foul wind and snow;

That I took for the Montauk house

and set the course to go:

All sails full-blown we ran aground

— that light misleading me!

And slow we foundered in the night

As dawn were lost at sea …

2. East Hampton 
<DIV ALIGN=JUSTIFY>
Before, one band of Puritans — showing Cromwell's mark — succeeded in

reaching Salem, from there to Long Island, and founded the village

of Maidstone in 1649. That same year, John Milton joined the leadership

of England's new commonwealth.

Yet Milton and Cromwell had first planned to sail off with these

ambitious Puritan saints, come to America, be as a "City upon a

Hill" — the Old World's eyes upon them — but Milton was arrested

with Cromwell on boarding the ship.</DIV>

3. The Wreck

She melted like a lump of sugar

two hundred years after that dream.

Bound for New York with cargo from Peru

that John Milton the merchant clipper

mistook the lights and turning north

sailed onto the rocks at midnight

— all hands lost at sea …

men/sails/cargo/spars/money

washed ashore East Hampton's beach

knotted together in mortal ice.

At dawn, only the ship's bell

poised on top of some drowning mast

could be noticed, like a fool

with each wave laughing at the dead.

4. The Money 
<DIV ALIGN=JUSTIFY>
When the John Milton met her end at Montauk,

a canvas bag of gold coin was found on East Hampton's beach —

frozen in the pocket of the captain's pea coat —

and it was given to the wreckmaster for safekeeping

till the lawful heir should lay claim to it.

Soon after, a man arrived from New York, a member of the family of the late captain's widow,

or so he claimed — and he vanished, laughing, with all the money.</DIV>

</center></td></tr></tbody></table>
</center>

<center><a href="/surgery/jcohen">[Return to Cohen's Profile]</a></center>