a certain indefinite number of Petrarchan “sonnets”: №138
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 20 lines and an unorthodox rhyme-scheme is like a quartet with 6 members, though reproof is always welcome from anyone who feels so moved.
THE DEW that clings to blades of grass fresh mown
takes in the pastel face of morning sky
each drop below bears image of most high
a seed of light within the water sown
what wonders wait us when the seed is grown?
I take your aspects, gathered in my eye
at once revealing, they also belie
the soul that has her image outward thrown
and I can scarcely call this thing my own—
this power at work in me to draw me nigh
in my own soul to yours, whom I have seen
alone in image, likeness outward cast
as light reflected, captured by a screen
or through a wall of stained-glass windows passed
but which, showing itself, remains unseen
and ever flees away into the past
still this power works upon my heart to clean
its eye and compass until then at last
images cease to interpose between
and we see face-to-face, not through a glass
