Three Sonnets

                           I

My idle prospects are an open wold
Where, in the sun, the dews of morning burn
Naked and pale, in fields of ripe lucerne,
Fragrant lucerne, azure and smoking gold
(Incense more pleasing if the truth be told              
To the gods’ nostrils than the soot’s return
As acid rain—tribute the heavens spurn
As sickly—to this miserable pinfold).
Industrious youth! The high gods laugh to scorn
Your picked fruits pilfered in the hopeful morn.
You are the abundance.  Your soft flesh, O youth,
Divesting to the noontide’s amorous tooth
Its shroud of mortal snow will stain the sky
With gold and turquoise filaments, burn and die.

9/13/2011


                               II


(Faust, Zweiter Teil, Fünfter Akt, v. 11581-11586)

Though my intended task is still undone,
My stone-pale blood reduced and untoward
My backward youth could wish its maiden sword
Were fleshed with deeds and sated with the sun.
To wrest by force of art from the million-
Marvelled fortress of language the bright hoard
Of silver words, by dragon-avarice stored
Against all strength, is hardship scarce begun.
But all that I in animal fury durst
In one proud heartbeat meeting strength with strength
Is animal fury scorned and wasted breath
Until time like a ruptured artery burst
And saturate the sky throughout its length
With poetry, hypoxia and death.

5/4/2012


                           III

The wind is fair, and tides of sunlit foam
Engage, immesh, retreat and flash again
In liquid foray, like embattled men.
This pulse of spray, this dance of tides, this dome
Of sweet and sea bright air, I call my home;
An exiled slave, till fortune, fate or pen
Secure release, and once more rapt, I ken
My salt and crystal sea, my spirit’s Rome.
The rape of Aphrodite: a child’s flesh
Polluted by excited sea foam. Dragon
Semen milked from the all-inseminating
Seahorses yoked to Oceanus’ wagon
Coating her calves and ankles with the fresh
Spittle roused by the wrath of the God’s mating.

3/16/2012