Five sonnets to the lovely spurner, from the spring of 2004.
A continuation of Five sonnets of contemplation, Five sonnets of erstwhile joy, Five sonnets of vanity; continued at Five sonnets to the aloof one.
1
Why cannot I despise you? It would be best
To drop your elevation in my mind,
For my esteem resultant would attest
To all else rising as your own declined;
In lauding you I shake all natural orders
And violently civility I wring;
What is this madness on which I have bordered
To thus confound the rightful shape of things,
Where you lie low, outside all people's scope? -
All, saving me, who like the utter fool
Make you a paradigm, and thusly mope,
Rejected by so base a pinnacle -
So sweet, too - far too sweet to be a brute,
Yet whose animality I can't refute.
2
Would that for one mere hour you might remain,
And not resume your path away from us;
For watching you depart gives me such pain;
Your leaving borders on iniquitous;
What matter must at just this moment bear
Upon you that you must take leave of me
Right now, when earlier I had not cared
Whether you had come or not? Just presently,
You tease, and pleasure unforeseen retract,
When clearly lies it well within your power -
For who else is there who nothing ever lacked,
Whom nature with all grace chose to endow her?
To speak thus, darling, I do not embellish:
This hour, you - you alone - I'd like to relish.
3
It makes me want to laugh when you decry
My ignorance of you, my constant distance;
You make it out to seem I pass you by
At every chance, and that of your existence
I am, by choice, completely unaware;
That you could offer all I've asked you for
But still I'd mope around and wouldn't care
That you had granted so much of your store.
Perhaps. Well could it be that, these things done,
I'd see them not as lovingly bestowed.
But how am I to know the grace I've won,
When in our times of youth you only glowed
When I was nowhere near enough to see it
And your eyes enjoined me patiently to flee it?
4
I fear, approaching you, my soul will flee
Its home, abandon here directionless
The entirety of mine that you can see
And which has strained and striven to impress,
Which hasn't yet impressed you. Yet I can't
Be mad at you, or feign to be amazed
That in you, notice I have yet to plant
That in me, some attention not yet razed
Points at you. I know, I must my heart invest
For you to realize me - I think that's it -
But how can I? beneath your daily test
Of silent growls you utter in our midst,
While I seek refuge, flight from you chaotic,
As with each step your call comes near melodic?
5
Denounce me, then - pretend I never speak,
When daily I address you, half in vain,
When you ignore my comfort from last week,
When last month I distracted you from pain,
When decades past I talked to you so often
You sickened at the hearing of my voice
And brushed me off, eyes rolling, tense strains softened,
"Oh, yes, of course..." to calm my clashing noise:
Then you denounce my silence you requested
In stares, devoid of dignity of words.
Millennia ago, my speeches bested
My babbling now: for eons this you've heard,
That tired of hearing these your praises sung,
Delight you'd find to watch my larynx wrung.
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