Tag Archives: Italian Sonnet

Sonnet IX: Trapped

Posted by David Emeron on

No choice for me to sanctity refuse
Nor hesitate to tenderness adore;
Too long had I such reticence before
My failing-fast reluctance to excuse.

No choice to make; regard the choiceless muse–
That love to which in helplessness I swore.
No choice to take, no helpless choice, the lore
Whose wonderment would grant me solace, whose

Enthral would thrall me with her soft caprice,
Whose warming shield would warn me then into
Whose fate and fatelessness I would pursue.

But now, to cease the hold its hold would cease,
And nary muse nor swear an oath to peace,
My heart will sing its praises to be true!

This sonnet is part of a short sequence; click here to read it all:

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Sonnet I: Ode

Posted by David Emeron on

I felt but did not see nor hear the one
And only one who fell to the abyss:
No single scream of fear nor rage in this
Abandoned call–nor hate from whence begun

This long abandoned fall of he who won.
But still the chill of recklessness persists
In all–the tremor of its wrath resists,
Appalling me, a will to be undone.

Yet almost as I fell myself–that with
Abandon… frozen… squalls me to the north–
The shaken state to which I have withdrawn.

What story shall they write, what ode, what myth
Shall celebrate such infamy thenceforth
When long and cold ago I will have gone?

This sonnet is part of a short sequence; click here to read it all:

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Sonnet I: What Is Lost

Posted by David Emeron on

Readeth not these lines; they are not, young girl,
For thee. They are, to souls like thine, forbidden,
Though they may betray what hast thou hidden
In thine heart, these words should not unfurl

Thy feelings. Thou hast cast thy lot to hurl
Them, stealing–strong or even weak, amid
The squealing swine to be forever hid–
From thine own soul, unknowing, every pearl.

Readeth, thou must not, these lines; they do not
Describe what hast thou chosen. Even now,
Thine heart is frozen. Thou hast cast thy lot
Not winning life, but dreary death; for thou

Hast chosen strife, bereft of song and verse;
And all thy long tomorrows are a curse.

This sonnet is part of a short sequence: click here to read it all:

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Sonnet IX: The Damned

Posted by David Emeron on

Sell all your daughters and enslave your sons;
And pray they find a swift mortality;
Loot boys of childhood, strapped to bombs and guns;
And stone the little girls, once made you smile;

And close your eyes or turn your back; destroy,
Make hard your heart, to this reality;
Unclothe your helpless infant girls and boys
And mutilate them all; deaf to this vile

Lament; and let their wailing be the first
As worship to their god’s brutality;
Your agonising life and theirs is cursed;
Kindness… mercy… and love… are all a trial.

Unchained, you’ll wish a stranger peace and life;
Most likely on your way to stone your wife.

This sonnet is part of a short sequence; click here to read it all:

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Sonnet VIII: The Craven and the Valiant

Posted by David Emeron on

I’ve been ashamed I have not held the line
Myself. Nor shown respect for those who did
Nor ever thought I could, a thought kept hidden
On a shelf of false disdain, maligning

Those who would; and pained to think my spine
Was weak. At least, until that day undid
My cravenness. That day I knew, amid
My web of lies, that woven not of mine–

No, tangled from another’s twine, a slack
And mangled maven–much more meek, supine,
More cowardly as then I was.  No black
Nor white existed, why the fuss? he late
Insisted, only grey: The grey of hate
Of they who save the day, and hold the line.

This sonnet is part of a short sequence; click here to read it all:

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Sonnet VI: The Peace Prayer

Posted by David Emeron on

She sang her hymn before her eyes had seen
The glory of the coming of the Lord,
The blood and death of mortar, gun, and sword,
And brother killing brother long had been.

Then callow-sang of peace, with freedom won,
To eager faces, white and brown… and black,
Whose liberty had just been gifted back
Still soaked with blood by mortar, sword, and gun.

Imagine men had heard that hymn four score
And seven years of blood and death before,
Heard next her callow, pacifist’s decree,
Laid down their arms to study war no more:

With shackled peace from sea to shining sea,
What hue would now such eager faces be?

This sonnet is part of a short sequence; click here to read it all:

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Sonnet V: By Their Fruits

Posted by David Emeron on

I saw and I believed and then I knew;
As brick and mortar fell, and glass and steel;
And blood and flesh and fire, mien, and weal,
And hope, and dream, and aspiration slew;

And friendship, love and heart, and sky once blue
Now green with envy, angry red with zeal
Of hate, of lie, of wound no lie can heal,
And speculation knowingly untrue.

I heard, I disbelieved and then I thought:
How typical that supposition grew
So cravenly away from where it ought
To rest; from certainty that, shining through
This calumny, these wailing filth have wrought
This death–these filth who hide from what is true.

This sonnet is part of a short sequence; click here to read it all:

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