a certain indefinite number of Petrarchan “sonnets” (49)

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 17 lines is like a quartet with 6 members, though criticism and rebuke is always welcome from anyone who feels so moved.

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SOME have called this world a vale of tears
we enter through some unremembered gate
where ten-thousand tribulations lie in wait
for us; confounded by our hopes and fears
we wander in a labyrinth of mirrors,
encounter our own face and call it fate
and as the hour for me is waxing late
then in the falling light there now appears
a vision, shimm’ring, swims into my ken
and arrays itself before my failing sight
a vision of life’s origin and end
unfolding like a starburst in the night:
each valley makes a mountain to ascend
the obverse of each depression is a height
to scale, the soul to strengthen and transcend
the limits of her selfhood and take flight
and finally to be born again as light