a certain indefinite number of Petrarchan sonnets (93)
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. This is more-or-less an actual Petrarchan sonnet so it will not be preceded by my usual exculpatory disclaimer about having departed from the paradigmatic form.
YOU’VE JOURNEYED over hill and dale to draw
new draughts of insight from the spirit’s well
with hopes a newfound vision may foretell
what dreams may come to perch after the law
you strove to follow, just like so much straw,
was made to bales of hay that farmers sell
and fed to beasts with igneous tongues as well
but might these hungry flames succeed to thaw
some patch of frozen earth where could be sown
new saplings you and I could help to grow?
and when they have into a forest grown
that distant day then you and I shall know
each one the other just as we are known
