A moment on this Earth to live, to die,<br></br>as real and unrelenting as a dream;<br></br>phenomena and phantoms pass us by,<br></br>as empty of importance as they seem.<br></br><br></br>We are by choice beneath illusion’s sway,<br></br>our shadowed spirits subject to a whim –<br></br>each phantom a reflection, in its way,<br></br>upon a mirror desolate and dim.<br></br><br></br>One moment we are hidden in a crowd,<br></br>another we go lonely to the grave;<br></br>but ere we don the ceremonial shroud,<br></br>we glimpse the bright reflection that we crave:<br></br>that phantoms, hidden by the dream-world’s mist,<br></br>reveal a fellow dreamer’s lips when kissed.<br></br>
For several million years, we’ve bowed to fate,<br></br>we’ve been locked in an arms race eons old.<br></br>It’s only now we can retaliate<br></br>against the architect; we’ve rolled<br></br>the dice of evolution many times,<br></br>and been subjected to its harsh selection.<br></br><br></br>We’ve been the victim of its many crimes.<br></br>Now we’ve perfected our means of protection,<br></br>and tamed the outer world – but not the inner.<br></br><br></br>This life belongs to you, the fittest ape,<br></br>in this long game you are the winner –<br></br>you are the pinnacle and can escape<br></br>the chains of selfish interest placed at birth:<br></br>create the world you wish to see on Earth.<br></br>
A burst of color in bespeckled night,<br></br>you came into my life like foxfire’s glow:<br></br>and I was left agape beneath your light,<br></br>a dancing phosphorescence on the snow.<br></br><br></br>I tried awhile to catch you in my grip,<br></br>like clay that reaches upward to the sun;<br></br>and earthbound I, like sunlit dirt, would slip<br></br>and end our rendezvous ere it begun.<br></br><br></br>Aurora, how I long to watch you dance!<br></br>Once in my lifetime I had eyes to see<br></br>your form across the starlit night by chance;<br></br>to some you’re commonplace, but not to me.<br></br><br></br>Aurora, you who animates the sky,<br></br>I’ll never hold you, but I’ll always try.<br></br>
It took the work of years to make us friends,<br></br>of hours of hardship, days of idle chatter –<br></br>of conflict, followed by sincere amends;<br></br>of arguments that simply didn’t matter –<br></br>and we were young, and thought we’d have our lives<br></br>to be close by and never out of touch.<br></br><br></br>How wrong we were! The memory survives<br></br>of you and I, and hasn’t tarnished much,<br></br>but you are gone and shan’t in time return.<br></br><br></br>I wonder if I come across your thoughts,<br></br>or if mine was a bridge you meant to burn:<br></br>its blackened span yet stands; its trestle rots.<br></br><br></br>It took the work of years to build our bond,<br></br>and in the space of seconds it was gone.<br></br>
Brown, bare, barren under stinging March winds
that scour the Earth with their frigid wrath,
only the snow and erstwhile crow bring ends
to the emptiness left in Winter's swath.
Days may be longer, but just by seconds,
and Summer's heat lies away down the path,
with its promised touch from both Sun and hands.
O, let the seasons keep their ancient oath!
Let me be quick by the touch of another,
the fruit of that seed which made Earth mother--
the nectar of which is sweeter than song
and flows, a river much wider than long,
in its course to the source wherein Truth lies--
a blessing upon hearts, minds, ears, and eyes!
Memory Muses for Mar 8: "Brave" The Star-Spangled Banner, The Rodney King riots, and Lou Reed.
"Memory Muses" (formerly "Your Memory Report") is my short Patreon-exclusive weekly show that looks at the arts through history, includes a "word of the week" and a poem or two.
I will return this dirt to Earth in time,<br></br>this mud and clay that has been made a man<br></br>and walks and speaks in hapless pantomime<br></br>of some design, then crumbles back to sand.<br></br><br></br>This temporary home that I have found<br></br>will be in time possessed by its first lord,<br></br>and I’ll no longer linger in the ground<br></br>when I’ve consigned this dust and cut the cord.<br></br><br></br>Yet where will I, in time, be thus removed?<br></br>Will I, somehow, find my way back to you?<br></br><br></br>The destination past this world’s unproved,<br></br>and we, for now, are merely passing through.<br></br><br></br>This body is no more than a conveyance:<br></br>to locate you, and then rest in abeyance.<br></br>
After Rainer Maria Rilke's "Liebeslied";<br></br>see my translation <a href="https://seanpatrick.phd/2024/02/10/a-translation-of-rilkes-love-song/">here</a>.<br></br><br></br><br></br>How many love songs will my heartstrings play<br></br><br></br>before they will be muted by my death?<br></br><br></br>How many times will I those three words say<br></br><br></br>with passion-tightened chest and bated breath?<br></br><br></br><br></br>Someday, I know, I will find my last love<br></br><br></br>and kiss their lips as fully as I can<br></br><br></br>while I make my appeal to God above<br></br><br></br>to keep me longer in the world of man,<br></br><br></br>just long enough to keep the player’s bow<br></br><br></br>pressed to the strings on which our hearts resound.<br></br><br></br><br></br>There are so many different loves to know<br></br><br></br>before the end, and beauty’s notes abound!<br></br><br></br><br></br>Let me remain with them on Earth, O Lord,<br></br><br></br>‘til our love’s song can sing its final chord.<br></br><br></br>
Look what the postman just brought: Two vintage #Parker#Sonnet Laque #fountainpens from the 1990s. According to the production codes, the Forrest Green one is from Q4/95 and the Midnight Blue one from Q1/96. The blue pen is quite crusty, but the green one looks hardly used. But before I can try them out, I need to give them a bit of TLC, and I need to get some Parker cartridges, as they came without a converter.
This will be my only purchase this month, I swear 😂
It's #SonnetSunday again, here are the sonnets I've posted this week, including today's, "Sonnet for a winter's night".
" Shall I compare you to a winter’s night,
so full of silence and replete with chill
that snowflakes blown beneath a dim streetlight
all seem to crackle where they land until
their brief and wondrous lives are claimed by slush...?"
A couple of new poems on my blog. One about concentration on the path to enlightenment, another about investing emotionally in someone who doesn't invest in you. Both are deeply personal for me.
Realized I have literally hundreds of sonnets in my backlog that nobody will ever publish but me, so I've decided to start publishing them on my blog more frequently than once a week.
The latest is a self-indulgent, flowery, archaic way of saying "like and subscribe"
Let they who stifle revolution find
that justice shall be served on heaping plates;
for though the eye of Law is rendered blind,
she has not yet forgotten why she waits:
and on the day when liberation comes,
the Law shall find her partner, Right,
abandon Power and his bloodied guns
and be restored in glory to her sight.
I shall not go with Death while you yet live,
I cannot with such idleness forsake
the thought of you; if I have aught to give,
then it is yours to be bequeathed and take.
How could I die while you yet grace the Earth?
How could I leave behind the sun’s own light,
or cast aside the air I’ve breathed since birth?
These days, the images rush through my head
of memories I’d excise with a knife
if I could crack my skull, of moments fled
that shame me in their innocence; my life
is nothing but a cavalcade of fools,
each one parading their stupidity:
and each, by virtue of their molecules,
is my forebear – that memory is me.
Let war be made by bloody-minded men,
let victories be piled on the graves
by heroes, let them char the world again
in service of some higher cause that saves
them from the burden of regret; let they,
who do not know the meaning of a sin
be tasked with burning all of it away.
Thus always to the worlds of wizened men:
to fall apart where malice has endured
in favor of a peace beyond their ken.
The weight of sin to which they’ve been inured
no longer shall by justice be ignored,
and it shall split the strawmen on their thrones;
the wickedness inherent in the sword
shall be interred with bitter history’s bones.
Dreams are a lie that consciousness has told
to give it comfort in the span of sleep:
for in their absence, death has taken hold,
as far as notions that the mind may keep.
The corpse persists – the anima has fled –
to leave behind an empty nest of brains.
To think that I have spent a night in bed,
the continuity of me derailed
by death, so far as thinking was concerned!
My body, where my spirit was impaled,
has rested soundly – by mind’s absence learned
that it is being’s true home, not petty thought.
We are our bodies, much as we wish not.