a certain indefinite number of Petrarchan “sonnets” (44)
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.
IS THIS NOT the carpenter’s son we know?
whose father and mother we have often seen
whom we have come to call a Nazarene?
whom we have watched in strength and stature grow
as to and from his father’s house he’d go?
we know more or less of every place he’s been
kept eyes on him at every point between
from daybreak till the rosy evening glow
indeed, and yet…one time did I behold
him robed in light and on his head a crown
of autumn Sun that glanced on fields of gold
that lie beyond the outskirts of this town
the very air seemed then to be ensouled
I saw him rise up as the Sun went down
the burnished sky seemed him aloft to hold—
“except in his own country and his town,
no prophet’s without honour,” we are told
24 And He said, “Truly I say to you, no prophet is welcome in his hometown. 25 But I say to you in truth, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the sky was shut up for three years and six months, when a great famine came over all the land; 26 and yet Elijah was sent to none of them, but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. 27 And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet; and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.” 28 And all the people in the synagogue were filled with rage as they heard these things; 29 and they got up and drove Him out of the city, and led Him to the brow of the hill on which their city had been built, in order to throw Him down the cliff. 30 But passing through their midst, He went His way. Luke 4