Mary Ann Evans
She holds fast to the
Immutable mechanics of
Creation -
Celestial clocks driving the
Motions of the soul;
Bell curves upending
Philosophy, usurping
Poetry –
Until her
Heart is broken. Then
All
Matter becomes heat: the
Cosmos decays into fevered
Entropy, the flow of
Disorder moulding the
Psyche - moulding the
Future.
Minds malleable,
Minds like phosphorus,
Minds ceaselessly beginning.
Not clocks, but
Clouds that churn and
Swirl amid a welter of
Inscrutable wills;
Clouds calved and
Borne along by
Numberless currents.
Now she pities those in
Thrall to the
Final Law of the World:
Casaubon lost among
Small closets and
Winding stairs with his
Key to All Mythologies,
Cut down by an
Adipose heart;
Tertius Lydgate riveted to his idée fixe – The Primitive Tissue of Life - floored by
Money mishaps,
Condemned to treat gout.
And yet
Will Ladislaw rebels against an
Inherited blot;
Dorothea Brooke
Ventures,
Falters and
Learns;
Evolution rides upon
Heaped-up error and
Random flux;
Chaos and
Contingency flesh out
Theodicy;
Will and fate
Entangle -
Neither
Fully formed, nor
Fully free.
©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2026
Partly inspired by George Eliot and her magnum opus, Middlemarch (1872)
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#newpoem: ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2026
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