a certain indefinite number of Petrarchan “sonnets”: №179
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 18 lines and an unorthodox rhyme-scheme is like a quartet with 5 members, though reproof is always welcome from anyone who feels so moved.
THE MOMENT HE believed that he could keep the treasure he’d amassed through guile and theft the vaulted Heavens then in twain were cleft the clouds began vehemently to weep and tides of water came in floods to sweep his prizes out to sea, leave him bereft of all he that he possessed with nothing left for such a harvest was what could reap for having built his house upon the sand— the fruiting of the seed he first had sown, the fire of the blaze he first had fanned— but when he lays foundations upon stone and fells a forest by his faithful hand; the axe, when it bites wood, it is his own; the sap that comes upon the Earth to land and pool, his own heart’s blood it is alone; each timber that he comes to hew and sand— each plank is in reality his bone; if I say more, no one will understand
