Weep

I know all things must end; all good must pass;

And entropy will vanquish everywhere.

Existence is an insubstantial gas

Whose vapor dissipates into the air.

I know the world we live in, too, is doomed:

That as a species we have wrecked it so

That when by other hands we are exhumed

They'll wonder at our rush to meet our woe.

I know all this: that everything will fade

And all that we can do is weak and frail;

I know that everyone should live afraid

And like a baby never speak but wail;

I know it, but I cannot but believe

Despite it all, it's valuable to grieve.

Gothic Fantasia

Deep in the woods, I hear, there is a spot
Where no sun shines, and in the night the moon
Cannot be seen; where it is never hot,
Even in summer, and the cheerless tune
Of bagpipes always plays. And I have heard
The echoes of them playing as I stood
Searching it out, a tune without a word
Eerily screeching through the darkened wood.
It struck me standing, and I bent my ear,
Believing that the deep glade must be near:
I stood as rooted as the trees around,
Willing the sound to echo forth again
But all was silent, as the ceaseless pound
Of my own heart filled up the open glen.

On Turns

It occurred to me today, as I was teaching my class about sonnets, that a key factor in a successful sonnet is the use of the turn. The turn is a part of a sonnet I have not yet written about here in any depth, but it is intimately bound up in the content, form, and meaning of a sonnet. The turn(s) is (are) where the sonnet differentiates itself from other forms, because the turn is where the movement happens.

A sonnet is not a good sonnet unless it takes advantage of the opportunity that every sonnet rhyme scheme provides for a turn: a change from setting up or describing a situation to developing that situation. I use "developing" intentionally, as there are many ways to develop a situation: a reversal, a continuation, an explanation, a narrowing of focus, a broadening of focus, etc. What is crucial here is that something changes: that the sonnet is not static, but progressive.

The standard place for a turn is where the rhyme scheme changes. This can be a big bold change like in a traditional Petrarchan or Italian sonnet (ABBAABBA/CDECDE or CDCDCD with the turn at the end of the AB section). It can be a last-minute whiplash like in a traditional Shakespearean or English sonnet (ABABCDCDEFEF/GG with a turn before the couplet). There can be a series of smaller turns, as in the same form (ABAB/CDCD/EFEF/GG with turns after each change in rhyme). And I find that having this alignment between rhyme and turn is actually a good sign of a well-crafted sonnet: there is no ironclad rule that says a sonnet cannot have its turn where there isn't a change in rhyme, but doing so allows the rhyme scheme to pull double duty. This can apply to other elements as well: metrical substitutions or changes, for instance, can also be a turn's best friend.

What I wanted to focus on here is that the turn often makes less traditional rhyme schemes more interesting. Take, for example, a Spenserian sonnet (ABABBCBCCDCDEE). This has quatrains like a Shakespearean sonnet, but the rhyme scheme links across them by the reuse of the same rhyme, creating couplets. This means that a Spenserian sonnet flows together until the climactic EE rhyme at the end, offering the potential for an extremely potent couplet turn, even more powerful than in a Shakespearean sonnet. A similar effect appears in Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey's early sonnet "The soote season," which has the unusual rhyme scheme ABABABABABABCC. The sense of motion is different than in the Spenserian rhyme scheme, but the core element of heavily emphasizing the couplet turn remains, if anything made stronger by the use of only one rhyme pair before the turn and by refusing all couplets before the end as well.

A different but equally potent effect can come in poems with multiple turns, as in the 4/4/4/2 Shakespearean example but also in other forms as well. Sir Thomas Wyatt's "Whoso list to hunt," another early sonnet in English, finds a hybrid form derived from Petrarch with an ABBAABBACDCDEE rhyme scheme. This provides for two turns: as in Petrarch, between AB and CD rhyme schemes, but also between the CD and the final EE couplet. Petrarch's own poem on which this is based (Sonnet 190) does a softer version of this by having a mini-turn in the middle of the sestet between the CDE and CDE rhyme pairs. This is an advantage of the CDECDE ending to a Petrarchan sonnet (as opposed to CDCDCD) in that the two repetitions of the three-line CDE unit is more congenial to this kind of mini-turn than the three repetitions of a two-line CD unit. It's not that a turn can't be two lines (see: every couplet turn ever) but rather that the CD units would require an additional turn (between each pair), which is harder to achieve.

There is no reason, of course, why this turning element in the sonnet should be limited to traditional rhyme schemes (though as I hope the above shows, "traditional" covers a wide range already). Shelly's "Ozymandias" is ABABACDCEDEFEF, a decidedly untraditional scheme, and main two turns come exactly where you'd expect: at the hiccup in the rhyme, the E ("And on the pedestal these words appear") and at the final turn to the F rhyme ("Nothing beside remains. Round the decay"). Changes in rhyme can overlap with turns wherever they are found. Want to write a sonnet with seven different rhymes and put a turn every time you switch? More power to you (it's going to be hard though). Want to put your couplet at the start and then run four quatrains of turns after it? Enjoy! The central idea though, remains: a good sonnet has interesting turn(s), where the ideas shift and the poem moves, and those turn(s) should line up with the changing rhyme. This is a classic example of how craft meets meaning, and of how the tools of the sonnet can contribute to the forms' poetic effects.

Ecclesiastes

Every piece of news is bad;

I cringe before I turn the page

To ward against the dark and sad,

And bank the omnipresent rage.

I try to turn my face away,

Read from the corner of my eye;

I fear the horrors of the day.

It is a struggle not to cry.

Every email feels a threat

I hate to turn my laptop on

For dread of being overset

Because my confidence is gone

That told me once the world won't burn.

But now it will. It is our turn.

Falling

The sky above is brooding with despair
Promising nothing quite so much as rain.
An autumn chill breaks through the summer air;
A tumbleweed of leaves drifts down the lane
Until it smacks against a car, and breaks,
Shedding itself into the gutter. Light
Diffuses out of nowhere, and so makes
No shadows. It is neither day nor night.
A strange uncertain silence has descended:
No squirrels, no birds, no people break the peace.
Only the acorns on the roof have rended
The empty quiet: and they too soon cease.
Time is suspended. Clocks don't tick. Yet I
Must wander on beneath the saddened sky.

Urban Pastoral

The curtains haven't opened up all day
The little dog thrusts out a curious nose
Hoping someone new will come and play.
She settles down. The curtains slowly close.
A cat with matted hair struts up the walk,
Pauses and licks herself, then ambles by.
The nose emerges in a sudden shock
Of righteous indignation, and an eye
Glares outward with a growl. But the cat
Ignores it, wanders off, and disappears.
The nose retracts, and leaves the curtain flat
Except a corner, where two little ears
Are barely visible, to listen for
The cat, should she again threaten the door.

Imagined Horrors

The night is long and full of ghosts
Not of the dead--we vanish when we die--
But of ideas. The unimagined hosts
Flitter inanely in the daytime sky
But hover closer when the night draws in.
They try to burrow deep into our souls
Prompting our dreams of saintliness or sin
Pursuing always their own selfish goals:
To be remembered, thought, and given wing
Within a living mind. I cannot sleep
Or they will occupy my everything
And I, who never contemplate the deep
Will find myself, despite my inclination
Engaged in sudden ratiocination.

DBev

When I was twenty-three, I took his class

And when I wrote, he'd read, and he'd respond.

A twenty-three-year-old can be an ass

But he was kind, and patient, and beyond.

When I was twenty-six, we taught together

And I learned just a little of his ways;

If I can teach, then he was my bellwether

Leading with subtle hints and cautious praise.

When I was thirty-one, we met again

(He gave a talk I managed to attend);

At thirty-two, he sent a card that then

Implied I'd graduated to a friend.

The last I heard of him was that December

And all that I can do now is remember.

Devotional

Eternal God, help me to see the wrong
In what I think is right. Help me to be
The version of myself that You can see
That brings my human weaknesses along
(Recalling good does not quite equal strong)
But turns them toward the best consistently
Striving to become a better me
In whom Your image may, at last, belong.
Help me to see my flaws and never flinch
While seeing in my enemy the good
That he intends, and how he does Your will.
Let me improve my own self inch by inch
To be the person that You know I should
And in pursuit of justice never still.

Meditation

Sometimes I wonder why I worship God
And then I see the beauty in the world--
The orcas cresting in a joyful pod,
A newborn ferns first tendrils now unfurled,
A stationary stormcloud on a hill--
And I remember, for a little while.
But in the face of such enormous ill
As stalks the land, it's difficult to smile
Even at the beauty. Orcas die;
The old-growth forests where the ferns live fade;
And stormclouds dash their beauty from the sky.
Beauty lives, it seems, to be unmade.
But then the cycle of the Lord still turns:
New calves are born, and rain brings forth new ferns.

Guilt

The sea of open pain that lies between
"This isn't who we are, this isn't us"
And "this isn't who we wish that we had been"
Swallows whole expeditions without fuss.
"We don't do this." Well, actually, we did
We know (we knew, we always know) it's wrong
But that alone cannot and should not rid
Our souls of having done it. We can long
To live upon that blessed, far off shore
But oceans are not crossed by mere desire.
We must set sail: be better, and do more,
And take the fault and blame, however dire.
We may fall seasick as we turn and toss
But we must stomach it, or else not cross.

I Lift My Lamp

They didn't break the law. That shouldn't matter
Since they're still human, and we ought to care
About them all. But kindness tends to shatter
When pressed too hard, as we forget what's fair
And fall back on what's easy. Either way
They had the right to come, the right to flee,
The right to seek a future from today
(The same right we declared so holily
Two hundred years ago). They did no wrong.
We did. We do. And we continue to.
If we're a country where they don't belong
We need to change, to pledge ourselves anew
To our ideals, which we have failed before.
That's no excuse: we must and can do more.

Abortive

A woman's body ought to be her own;
Our history has struggled with this fact.
A fetus in her womb, however grown,
Is not a person, and it cannot act;
A father (and a mother) gives to her
A life, an education, and a home
She may owe them her love, but I am sure
She isn't owned despite a shared genome;
A husband, bound to her by vow and ring,
Should be a partner in the life they choose
But though they might agree on everything
He isn't her: and this should not be news.
There ought to be no need, but let's review:
A human woman is a human too.

Hello World

I find that I can write whatever here:
My words will never find the light of day
Since nobody reads sonnets anyway
My freedom is now comfortingly clear.
I can write nonsense, folderol, or queer
Misshapen things formed from my verbal clay
That crack in firing. Metaphors can stray;
It doesn't matter where they choose to veer.
Unedited, my words evaporate
And by their residue I know them pure
They leave no mark behind to indicate
I ever wrote them. And yet I am sure
Deep in my soul, their echoes resonate
In empty chambers where my heartstrings stir.

Manifest

Frontiers aren't empty. But they never were.
The basic concept that the West was Won
Requires it to be won from someone;
The New World's only new if you refer
To those who didn't know it. It's a slur
To those who did: implies that they are un-
Or less-than-human, because everyone
Who mattered was a connoisseur
Of only other lands. Columbus came
And with him death. Plagues and guns will kill
But even then the land is never void.
The bodies of the people thus destroyed
And even more those who survive it still
Deserve a presence, power, and a name.

Fear

Death is, they tell me, part of human life
A destination we cannot avoid
The best that we can do is quiet strife
And keep an even keel before the void.
Some say we linger on beyond our death
In something like a paradise or hell;
I fear their claims are merely wasted breath
For 'til we go ourselves, we cannot tell.
Each day could be my last, though I must doubt
That this one is particularly so
As yet I've given neither up nor out
But maybe that's the way that I will go
Merely exhausted from an endless day:
And who would really want another way?

(P)residency

You know, you cannot run for President.
The race will take the same amount of time
No matter how you go. If you are bent
On the becoming, you will slink like slime
Oozing towards Iowa. You cannot run:
Once you have entered, everything you do
Is ours, no longer yours. There is no fun;
The relaxations you're accustomed to
We will now judge. So you are not your own;
You cannot run a country otherwise.
Even when you think you are alone
The state will see you with eternal eyes.
The next two years are bliss, with joy mixed in
Compared to what will happen if you win.

Notre Dame

I did not weep to see it burn;
I wept to see the others see;
To watch as children sadly learn
That nothing keeps eternally;
To see their elders, who believed
They had forever to behold
What now is lost, be subtly grieved
And wish they were no longer old
Not for themselves, for pains or aches,
But so the world might be renewed
If only for their children's sakes
So they too might have someday viewed
The buttressed roof, the lovely spire
As they had been before the fire.

April Showers

Just as the winter melts into the spring,
When daffodils begin to push up stalks,
When everyone is glad of everything
And days are finally long enough for walks;
Just as the summer seems around the bend
Whispering promises of life and light,
When what we've suffered finds at last an end
And lawns and trees are green again, not white;
Just as the seasons turn and make us merry,
And hope sneaks up to catch us unawares;
As we forget to be forever wary,
Putting aside our well-worn winter cares
The clouds arrive and punish us with rain
For thinking spring brought pleasure without pain.

Beg

My dog does not know how to beg
That doesn't mean she doesn't try
But pawing me upon the leg
Is ineffective: wonder why?
She has the puppy eyes, of course,
As any pup must, by default;
But easily resorts to force
To crack her food's resistant vault
Which would make sense, except she weighs
Just fourteen-fifteen pounds or so
So force from her merely conveys
The message of her deep-felt woe.
At least she doesn't bark so far
For which we all most thankful are.

Sisyphus

An hour here
An hour there
And so I veer
From care to care
No greater plan
No greater goal
Since I began
This long patrol;
I wander out,
I wander in
Ever in doubt
Of where I've been
Am I in hell?
I cannot tell.

33

Now I have reached my Jesus year
I wonder if I have twelve friends?
And if I ought to quake in fear
That this year my life story ends?
But I fear not, and nor should I,
I make no waves, I will not die
(If random chance we may count out)
I do not claim Messiah-hood
And if I'm honest, I might doubt
If I am even all that good.
So I am sure as sure can be
That this year's danger is no more
And at the end of thirty-three
All I will be is thirty-four.

Mass Murder

When Pittsburgh wept, I wept, for they were me;
If I had lived there, there I would have been.
Their pain was mine; I felt it on my skin
The phantom pain that dogs an amputee.
I grew up singing them: "Etz chaim hi"
Is how our children's services begin
Or end. All those who sing it are akin
Holding fast to that same holy tree.
I weep no less with Christchurch. Where we pray
No matter who we pray to, should be safe:
Should be a refuge from the world outside.
Their pain is mine, though half that world away.
This kind of violence is always treyf
Always haram, always a fratricide.

Ring Suburb

The best part of a city is the sprawl;
Not Jacksonville's suburban endlessness
Which really isn't cityscape at all-
A cul-de-sac of strip malls, more or less-
But also not the downtown business core:
The city of the city, neighborhoods
Where people live in closely, door by door,
The Wallingfords, the Queens, the St. John's Woods.
Downtown is but the jewel set in the ring
Whose carats, though the measure of its cost,
Ultimately is a useless thing
If all the metal holding it is lost.
Without downtown, a city's but a band;
Without the sprawl, a gem dropped from the hand.

A Loud

Ambient chaos exits me as noise;
I whistle like a teakettle on high.
I wonder often if the sound annoys
My colleagues, or the people passing by
And when I do, I also wonder why:
Why is it that my nerves are guitar strings,
Why I tap toes against my desk, or sigh,
Or creak my chair in rhythm as it swings.
Am I so tense that I cannot express
The fact of my existence silently?
Must every single little source of stress
Exhale itself so volubly from me?
Or would I cease to be, or just be less,
If I did not confirm it audibly?

List

I do not know what I should do today.
The air is crisp, the sun is shining bright
But since I know it is but lying light
I have no plans for outside anyway
For if in hopeful ignorance should stray
Into the world, trusting that all is right,
I would freeze solid, struggle as I might.
And so I lie here listless, in the way.
The work around me that I ought to do
The books to read, the essays I should skim,
The empty documents that wait for filling
All mock me cruelly, but do not imbue
My lazy soul with urgency or vim:
I do not do them, since I am unwilling.

Brex

England can't leave Europe. It just can't.
No matter all the tantrums it may throw.
It's stationary as a potted plant
That might desire,  but cannot move to go.
It may dissolve the legal ties between
The Continent (and Ireland) and it
But do recall it cannot flee the scene
Despite its protests in its current snit.
Its neighbours are its neighbours, come what may;
A plant cannot uproot itself and walk.
And so no matter what the Leavers say
Ultimately it must be all talk:
That doesn't mean it could not be the worst--
A plant uprooted tends to die of thirst.

Warship

On Friday nights, we join as one to pray,
To wish the world would be a better place
And as we do, we constantly retrace
The wishes of a distant yesterday.
We pray in words that we have learned to say
By rote, hoping that eternal grace
Forgives the syllables we will misplace
Hearing our hearts, and what we would convey.
And as we do it, we cannot forget
There is an officer next to the door
Protecting us from those we have not met
Who pray themselves that we should pray no more.
We lock our doors, to my profound regret:
The space of peace should not be rigged for war.

Paradise Regained

Though Milton, sexist, claims that Eden's state
Was one in which the woman newly made
By nature was devised subordinate
To man, and thus supposed a lesser grade
Of human, made (as often quoted) not
For God direct, as Adam was intended
But merely God-in-him, as if her thought
Were fully secondary. This is mended
If we recall (as Milton often would)
We do not live in Eden anymore
But in a new and fallen world, and good
And evil both are changed. I ask, therefore
If in this fallen world, knowledge increased
The time of sexism has finally ceased.

Walks

The ice is slick beneath my feet
Except where it is topped with snow
But as I stumble up the street
I find, I think, I like it so;
I like the moment ere I fall
When time slows down and focuses
When I can catch myself or sprawl
Among the deadened crocuses
I like the opportunity
To let the dog pull at my arm
And if she should outmuscle me
Expose myself to sudden harm
But cushioned by the snow, to feel
The danger is not fully real.

Float

To write a sonnet is a curious thing.
It once was merely fashion--de riguer--
To take a little room, and make it sing.
But now it smacks of heresy: impure,
Reactionary, even. Yet the form
Is still the same; the words (with some exceptions)
Remain unaltered. It is but the norm
That has abandoned me for new directions
Preferring something smacking less of craft,
With fewer rules (or less explicit ones).
For me, the sonnet is a little raft
To float across the depthless sound that runs
Between the banks of what I feel and say--
I cannot cross it any other way.

Whyfor

Were I to say the reason I am here
I would, I think, by now belie us both;
Not least because, although I'd be sincere,
I could no longer swear an honest oath
To say the reason has remained the same.
And yet because it motivated you
(At least, I think it did when first we came)
Its fundamental part must still be true
Since actions in the past retain their truth
And are not altered by the future's change--
Thus what we said, and meant, back in our youth
Time's violence cannot quite rearrange.
But nonetheless, each moment we remain
The answer changes, and will change again.

Tether

I think I know a way to be
Except I always get it wrong;
I live my life and hum along
Until I strike insanity
And then it all comes back to me
Like the lyrics of a song
Half-forgot until some strong
Occasion jogs my memory.
Then I recall how to devour
Each moment as it passes by
And live each day in joy and hope--
But then the passing of an hour
Relaxes me, and, sighing, I
Let go my hold upon the rope.

Nostalgia

I miss some cities I have lived in more;
I hunger for them, long to walk their streets,
Hop on a subway, hike the urban core,
Enter the suburbs where the city meets
Its end, see all that I have seen before;
Yet there are those whose various retreats
I have no need to once again explore,
Nor any urge to sample those old treats.
What is the difference between these two?
How can I tell which cities I prefer?
I much prefer to show them off to you,
That you may see them as I knew they were
But notice them yourself as something new--
The others are an insubstantial blur.

Love

Whatever I may try to say to you
However loud I shout or broad I write
(Though I should paint the sky with stars at night
Or echo all the highest mountains through)
It doesn't really matter what I do
Until your own soul whispers it is right
However quietly: your own delight
Is all that can convince you what is true.
I can encourage you, of course, or nag;
Pray to your understanding like a god;
Try every trick that ever has been sprung--
But what you think will only cease to lag
Behind my hopes when you yourself can laud
The tune and lyrics you yourself have sung.