LXVIII

Don August 17th, 2009

LXVIII 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.” 

            One of my projects in that first year of PhD study was to reread that heartbreakingly poignant book Don Quixote.  Was it making fun of the hopelessly romantic Don, or of the modern world coming into existence where chivalry was merely quaint and the Don could never be more than an anachronism?  It is hard to tell, but I know which side of the question I’m on!

 

 

Sonnet XXI

  

Clouds of knowing, cloven by a sword

Whose rust gleamed gold with fierce imagination,

Part before the tall Manchegan lord

And recombine in threads of contemplation

Of what is and what ought to be.  Conflation

Of all the ancient chroniclers had said

Of knights and their heroic occupation

Danced a poignant dance inside his head.

All the virtue about which he’d read

Must be fleshed out right here beneath the sun.

If chivalry could die, the world was dead!

No nobler, sadder deeds were ever done

For any maid in any olden story

Than those done for La Dulcinea’s glory.

 

Donald T. Williams, PhD

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