Of Two Minds - edit3

[dukealien]

edit;

Of Two Minds


I don’t believe some evil other hand
built those dark Monticello passages
which then permitted Thomas Jefferson
to visit its slave quarters secretly.
No, he designed and utilized, and knew
about them but forgot for hours and days–
much as that gifted polymath believed
his god an immanent but unconcerned
endowing, cool creator of his world–
most days, and while he wrote of human rights.
But other times he trembled to reflect
with nightly mounting dread that God is just.

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Thanks to @Magpie for the good critique.  You did pinpoint the problem areas, which I've tried to mend.  I hope the format change to one stanza works.

Getting closer to a pastiche of Jefferson's own contradictory writings - unalienable rights endowed by their Creator in 1776 vs. trembling for his country in fear that justice can't sleep forever, and God is just (1784).  Powerful writer with (to us) strangely compromised ideals.  About the best one can say, without excusing, is that he and the other Virginians got a close look at slavery and didn't want to be its subjects.