Five sonnets of erstwhile joy; a continuation of Five sonnets of vanity.
Continued at Five sonnets of contemplation, Five sonnets to the lovely spurner, Five sonnets to the aloof one.
1
That I had never met you long ago,
So to you I meant nothing years on end!
That I could flit around those whom you know
Without horror at being called your friend!
Inertia rules between us; in our youth,
It set us two in motion toward each other;
It now compels us back, through means uncouth,
That seeing me, you long to call me "brother."
Had you not known me, you would not expect
That I should hold my tongue at your caprice;
And with impunity I could project
The truth of us; we could air ourselves in peace,
But no - you've known me, with some small esteem,
In fear of which unspoken fancies teem.
2
At times I dream, captive to fantasy,
Not knowing that phantasms light my way;
But none disturbs me any more than she,
She whose most tender hands my fears allay,
Who holds me, never telling me to make haste,
For time flees, none more so than time glad spent;
Forever do we have, says she; though chaste,
Salacious; though that, no less heaven-sent;
All things, their opposites - all things of worth
In her possession rest, well in her grasp,
Yet out of every dreamer on the earth
She chooses me inside her arms to clasp;
But when I wake and think what charms there were
Upon that skin, you pale compared to her.
3
So many times has sunshine lit the days
When in my heart no light shone on its walls;
So many times does the warm sunshine stray
From my environs when jubilation calls;
Always, it seems, the world and I at odds;
No doubt, the world shall win, surely not I;
This terra firma is no place for clods,
And mother nature knows it, and decries
The efforts that I make to fit into it;
She chides, indeed, true to her female form,
Just as my love of old was known to do it.
But never in grief has felt the air this warm -
The lightning never flashed when I would whine:
I wonder why, tonight, it came on time.
4
If ever did perfection claim a look,
It would be your entire slender surface,
And in its quest would I, by hook or crook,
Devote myself, with neither goal nor purpose.
Such are you that befuddled do become
All those around you who, unwisely, gaze
Upon you; you send into frenzy some,
And others luckier into a haze;
But to me you did both, as I lament,
When singly would suffice. But so far gone
Was I when you deceived me, vehement
On what was not. Oh, how I babble on -
But let me stop, before I, half deranged,
Swear on the ichor flowing in your veins.
5
When intimating soon you will have come,
Such expectation fills my mind with glee,
It freezes, and my flapping tongue goes dumb,
Anticipating awe and majesty
As that which in your aura does meander,
And beckons those who no resistance possess
To succumb to it, in its direction gander,
To see your glow approaching, your finesse
Unequalled; and so met by the terrain
Your feet are, on soil pliant to your bound,
For so the earth is driven half insane -
Still less than I; but when you run aground
This joy, and coming promises rescind,
Then fades the grace that nature in you limned.
|
