a certain indefinite number of Petrarchan “sonnets” (50)

Ordinarily I don’t publish so much poetry at Theoria-press, and instead try to provide mostly essays with an odd poem or sonnet occasionally interspersed among them. But the Muse’s visits have outstripped my ability to keep pace with prose pieces so readers who prefer essays should peruse the archives of this site, which are replete with them. Also, I should acknowledge that the formal aspect of this “Petrarchan sonnet” is liberally conceived so it’s unnecessary to alert me that at “Petrarchan sonnet” with 22 lines is like a quartet with 7 members, though criticism and rebuke is always welcome from anyone who feels so moved.

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AN INTIMATION from beyond the pale
of day-to-day experience and mind
alerts you that the planets have aligned
wherefore then dost thou tremble and look pale?
your heart is wrapped as in a coat of mail;
with habit, fear conspires, your soul to bind,
to clip her pinions, leave her disinclined
to take to wing into the sky and sail
where Heaven beckons from behind a veil
of surfaces, to alterity resigned,
to space and externality confined:
is there a ladder that your soul may scale
to over-perch the ramparts that withhold
your soul from sojourn in the world above
where dwell her kindred, like a shepherd’s fold—
the hand of which this outer world is glove?
as the Manitean prophetess foretold,
there’s a ladder wrought of Beauty and of Love
for what we love is lovely to behold
and shall recast the soul into its mould
until she too shall shine like brightest gold
and be born again, now neither young nor old

Photo by Altınay Dinç on Unsplash