Archive for February, 2009

XXXV

Don February 21st, 2009

XXXV Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.” 

            It was not to be countenanced that my growing love affair with that Renaissance form the Sonnet should compromise my devotion to Alliterative Meter and all things medieval.  Now, Merlin is properly Celtic, not Saxon.  But why waste an opportunity to contribute to that delightfully irresistible web of anachronisms we call the Matter of Britain?  So let us think of this as Merlin emerging from Celtic twilight into the light of Anglo-Saxon Alliterative day:

 VISION 

The man who here sits    and moves not, nor speaks, 

But watches in wakeful,    wide-eyed silence,

A shadowy figure    may chance to meet,

That slowly, slowly,    slow approaches,

Taking form as it comes:

 

Falling hair,    like a flood of water,

On rocks of shoulders    splashes silver;

Eyes like coals    that ever smoulder

With eerie fire    flash from the shadows,

Glowing more bright as they come.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

XXXIV

Don February 11th, 2009

XXXIV 

Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.”

 

            What is it about the Sonnet that has fascinated almost ever poet worthy of the name since Petrarch?  The Shakespearean quatrains are just the right amount of exposition to set up the punch line of the couplet with maximal effect; the Petrarchan octave and sextet rise and fall like an ocean wave when you get them just right.  Getting either is like the feeling of hitting s baseball on the nose with the sweet spot of your bat and driving it over the fence in a perfect laser shot.  Once you’ve know that feeling, you’ve got to keep swinging until you get it again.  Even if you just have a base hit to show for it, that’s something.  Is this one a pop up, a homer, or something in between?  You must be the judge.  The bat I was swinging was several new Latin words that just needed sentences around them.

 SONNET X Might Magister Merlin, sapiens,

 Of Arthur’s court, mysterious counselor, chief,

In lore more learned than all the sons of men,

Intimate, he, of water, stone, and leaf.

Moses, who on mount received the Law;

Solomon King, princeps among the wise;

Jonah, saved from out great fish’s maw,

Magi of the East who searched the skies.

Long they sought, but could not understand

Fully how their Lord had overthrown

Sin, Death, fell Satan’s rule in fallen man

By making his body the true Philosopher’s stone.

What alchemy, that!  To touch a human soul

And there to turn base mettle into gold. 

Donald T. Williams, PhD

XXXIII

Don February 4th, 2009

XXXIII 

Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.”

            Let the minutes show that before concluding my senior year of college I felt compelled to attempt another short sonnet cycle.  Once again there are only three, and once again the last line of one becomes the first line of the next to tie the whole together.  It is obvious that I then thought that topical references from the recent Sixties would maintain their relevance forever.  It is also obvious that I was reading the metaphysical poets that year and had not yet sufficiently assimilated their exuberantly intellectual example into my own voice.  I hope it is also obvious that I was having loads of fun writing this.  I hope you can have a little reading it.

 SONNET VII 

If by a deep-voiced stream you chant the “om”

Or beneath carven stone the agnus Dei;

If you humbly bow before the Bomb,

Or if your thoughts turn to Rosemary’s Baby;

Or if you wonder “Why?”, conjecture “Maybe,”

And by Experiment your theories prove;

If noble Reason’s your exalted lady,

And mystic feelings never can you move;

If you say Eros, Amor, or Love,

Nirvana, Shan-ti, sweet Shalom, or Peace;

If to the earth you look, or heaven above,

Or to Da Vinci’s West or Krishna’s East

For answers that can satisfy your soul—

Then ask if they can really make you whole! 

 VIII 

The physic that can make a patient whole

Must be proportioned to his proper ills,

For letting blood goes not toward that goal

Unless with sanguine humors he’s o’erfilled.

But what if black, blood-mottled, murderous Sin,

Rebellion ‘gainst the Godhead’s rightful reign,

Be that sickness man hath fallen in,

Whose bloody issue flows from pride-swol’n veins?

Aye, then blood-letting shall we want indeed.

But, lest the patients with the treatment die,

Vicarious, perfect, infinite veins must bleed,

As Christ’s once did for us at Calvary.

For thus our cure was bought, at infinite cost,

When Christ was nailed to Calvary’s central cross.

 IX 

When Christ was nailed to Calvary’s central cross

And his bright blood flowed out, the Sun was pale,

For in the Son’s sunset the Sun was lost,

And thus in mourning, morning’s light was veiled;

And thus in darkness shrouded Phoebus sailed

Until in glory, bursting from his tomb

And having conquered Sin and Death and Hell,

The rising Son broke, shattered, split the gloom,

And at Son’s rising Sun’s light was resumed.

And angels sang, for in that light the day

When Sin and Death would meet their final doom

Was set, ordained, as Holy Scriptures say.

And still the light shines forth, though sometimes dim,

That then was kindled in Jerusalem.

Donald T. Williams, PhD