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The Love Sonnets Of Proteus. Part III: Gods And False Gods: LXIV

HE APPEALS AGAINST HIS BOND
In my distress Love made me sign a bond,
A cruel bond. 'Twas by necessity
Wrung from a foolish heart, alas, too fond,
Too blindly fond, its error to foresee.
And now my soul's estate, in jeopardy,
Lies to a pledge it never can redeem.
Love's loan was love, one hour of ecstasy,
His penalty eternal loss of him.
--See, I am penniless, the forfeit paid,
And go a beggar forth from thy dear sight,
My pound of more than flesh too strictly weighed
And cut too near the heart. Fair Israelite,
Thy plea was just. Thy right has been confessed.
And yet a work of mercy were twice blessed.

poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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Design or Dice 0806

Somewhere within each double helix haze
Our geni[e]us reaches out with magic wand,
Unites in sprung wrung multi-modal bond.
Recordings - unique keynote paraphrase.
Chained chromosomes control Life's nights and days,
Encoding telomeres in locks, dark, blond,
Strand chance entangled links before, beyond.
Design or dice? Still Nature antics plays,
Enigma existential, all decays
Little's known what from primaeval pond
Advances into future vagabond,
Versatile mutant, fenced from gnostic gaze.
If Time's spring somehow could be role-reversed
Earth might not know soft music's flow here versed.

(12 September 2008)

poem by Jonathan Robin
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Hope

All treasures of the earth and opulent seas,
Metals and odorous woods and cunning gold,
Fowls of the air and furry beasts untold,
Vineyards and harvest fields and fruitful trees
Nature gave unto Man; and last her keys
Vouched passage to her secret ways of old
Whence knowledge should be wrung, nay power to mould
Out of the rough, his occult destinies.

But tired of these he craved a wider scope:
Then fair as Pallas from the brain of Jove
From his deep wish there sprang, full-armed, to cope
With all life's ills, even very death in love,
The only thing man never wearies of--
His own creation--visionary Hope.

poem by Mathilde Blind
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"Venus by Adonis' Side"

Venus by Adonis' side
Crying kiss'd, and kissing cried,
Wrung her hands and tore her hair
For Adonis dying there.

Stay (quoth she) O stay and live!
Nature surely doth not give
To the earth her sweetest flowers
To be seen but some few hours.

On his face, still as he bled
For each drop a tear she shed,
Which she kiss'd or wip'd away,
Else had drown'd him where he lay.

Fair Proserpina (quoth she)
Shall not have thee yet from me;
Nor my soul to fly begin
While my lips can keep it in.

[...] Read more

poem by William Browne
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My Own Heart Let Me Have More Have Pity On; Let

My own heart let me have more have pity on; let
Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting yet.
I cast for comfort I can no more get
By groping round my comfortless, than blind
Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find
Thirst 's all-in-all in all a world of wet.

Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do advise
You, jaded, let be; call off thoughts awhile
Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room; let joy size
At God knows when to God knows what; whose smile
's not wrung, see you; unforeseen times rather—as skies
Betweenpie mountains—lights a lovely mile.

poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins
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My Own Heart Let Me More Have Pity on

My own heart let me more have pity on; let
Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting yet.
I cast for comfort I can no more get
By groping round my comfortless, than blind
Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find
Thirst 's all-in-all in all a world of wet.

Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do advise
You, jaded, let be; call off thoughts awhile
Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room; let joy size
At God knows when to God knows what; whose smile
's not wrung, see you; unforeseen times rather - as skies
Betweenpie mountains - lights a lovely mile.

poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins
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Bell's Palsy XVIII - Fragility

Ink flows as if it knows that tale once writ
cannot rephrase a passing phase whose light
too soon extinguished must merge into night
where sot or sage blot page, through age unfit.
We're puppets strung, hands wrung won't change a bit
repeated role enforced by karmic spite.
If free-will reigns, there's no pre-destined right
or wrong, no rung to heav'n, no roasting spit.
Through ‘accident' or ‘fate' fragility
in spotlight's thrown, ‘to be, or not to be'
depends upon coincidence where rules
few follow with prescient authority.
Manage man age when palsied dry eye's numb
is out of reach with speech deformed, near dumb.

(17 January 2009)

poem by Jonathan Robin
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Sere upon the Stem - 0849 - after William Shakespeare Sonnet LXXI

If, reader, brave, your stave taps this grave verse
unable to wave back Death's sable veil,
my phantom name don't pantomime, rehearse,
resign to Time that which beneath blade flail
harvest tithed, foregathered lies. Few wail
when petals fall, few care a tinkers curse
for memories that mattered once. Loves fail
when Winter's chill wind will to dust disperse
sad withered sepals sere upon time's stem.
Where shared chords strung wrung hands and shadowed hearse
mock best laid stratagem of mice and men.
none challenge Time beyond agenda terse.
Stark, poet sought postscriptum post mortem
to hitch starlight which might pitch night condemn.

(27 July 2007)

poem by Jonathan Robin
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Sonnet 83: Good, Brother Philip

Good, brother Philip, I have borne you long.
I was content you should in favor creep,
While craftily you seem'd your cut to keep,
As though that fair soft hand did you great wrong.

I bare (with envy) yet I bare your song,
When in her neck you did love ditties peep;
Nay, more fool I, oft suffer'd you to sleep
In lilies' nest, where Love's self lies along.

What, doth high place ambitious thoughts augment?
Is sauciness reward of courtesy?
Cannot such grace your silly self content,

But you must needs with those lips billing be?
And through those lips drink nectar from that tongue?
Leave that, Sir Phip, lest off your neck be wrung.

poem by Philip Sidney
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A distillation...

Our poem is a distillation
wrung from common and raw elements
unhusked grains of experience

drops for the journey's flask
caught from barely accessible slopes
of a deep desert well

sweet syrups tapped
from the surface of a long-lived tree
risen darkly from the hidden roots

poetry a hard-won slight reward
preserved, patrolled and guarded
once captured, always held

these works are power for their defenders
like a proof of science
which cannot be unfounded

[...] Read more

poem by Frank Bana
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