a certain indefinite number of Petrarchan “sonnets” (45)
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 26 lines is like a quartet with 17 members, though criticism and rebuke is always welcome from anyone who feels so moved.
BENEATH an over-hanging canopy
from the Seraph’s eye, a fallen tear
upon a pool frequented by deer
I come and Narcissus-like, on bended knee
I stop and stooping, consider what I see
from my vantage on the sloping bankment here
upon the water’s surface then I peer
(for the secrets of its dark profundity
repel my sight and so conceal from me
behind a painted veil, their mystery,
overwrought by a shimmering veneer)
and cast upon the plane in image clear
as the Moon reflected in a glassy sea
or light embodied in a leafy tree
I, startled, recognize with joy and fear
as one stood and placed before a mirror
the likeness in the pool of my own face;
upon that visage seen with outer eye
my soul’s image is cast upon the place
where that grosser form of me I do descry
and waxing now to shine in everything I face:
the reflection of the power that I call “I”
and “self” and “soul”; each phenomenon I trace
to that same-lantern hanging in the sky
of my experience; myself I see
in everything...who, then, sees himself in me?
Beautiful imagery❤️