a certain indefinite number of Petrarchan “sonnets”: №183

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 25 lines and an unorthodox rhyme-scheme is like a quartet with 5 members, though reproof is always welcome from anyone who feels so moved.

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AS PROPHETS HAVE in bygone ages sung,
this world’s ward bereaves us of our sight;
for every confine of it captures light
fragmenting it and casting it among
ten thousand things, and since our hearts were young
they’ve sought to navigate this maze aright—
this labyrinth to overperch in flight,
but only finding on occasion hung
a ladder from above to which they’ve clung
and striven with all vigor and all might
to rise up and attain sufficient height
ascending from their prison rung by rung
but I, no ladder find, only a broom
half-buried in a drift of dust and sand
we two alone to occupy this room 
and so I rise and take the broom in hand
and, sweeping, weep about my self-wrought doom:
this labyrinth was built by my own hand—
I laid the bricks and mortared every room;
repentant tears now pool and flood the land
I briefly pause but only to resume
although this plight was not the one I’d planned
at least my tears have made the desert bloom
the flowers and my tears by same command
the angel spins our threads on self-same loom

Photo by Benjamin Nguyen on Unsplash