a certain indefinite number of Petrarchan sonnets: №151
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.
A DYING ember swallowed up by grey
its swansong born on golden pinions bright
to sing the solemn psalm of fateful night
of the hero who had held our plight at bay,
with single hand had mastered Winter’s sway
now fallen with the fading of the light
a shadow only of his onetime might
an echo only of the glorious day
but an echo—yet I will take it in
and like a secret, I will guard and tend
the germ whence shall the age to come begin
forth its leaves and golden boughs to send—
for from the ash the god shall rise again
whose reign shall last until the world’s end
