PRESIDENT'S ESSAY
Milkweed again
POSTED
November 17, 2012

My friend John Barach offers a further gloss on the Richard Wilbur poem I discussed here yesterday. He suggests that the final lines about the milkweed possessing the field allude to Psalm 37:9, 11: Those who wait on the Lord, the humble, inherit the land. And of course that anticipates Jesus’ promise that the “meek will inherit the earth.”

John hears a scrambled echo of that promise in the title of Wilbur’s poem: “Milkweed” unscrampled is “meek will.”

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