a certain indefinite number of Petrarchan “sonnets” (81)
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 5 members, though criticism and rebuke is always welcome from anyone who feels so moved.
WHEN darkness gathers and your tired eye
combats oppression by the falling gloam
yet fails to apprehend the pathway home
your ear discerns no guidance but the cry
of a raven folded in the pitchy sky
that presses on you like a flattened dome
your thoughts, like scattered pages of a tome,
your attempts at recollection still defy
then you must change into an eye for seeing
you must transform your soul into a tongue
you must say Yes with your entire being
pronounce the word that’s neither old nor young
the key that is the heart forever freeing
from vain conceits to which it first had clung
and vain distresses from which it was fleeing
Yes is the sublimest psalm that can be sung
You’ve captured (with beautiful analogies, as usual) our need to envision and will ourselves to hope and an affirmation that the world is good and the force that rules it benevolent, NO MATTER WHAT! Thank you!