Sonnets

Shakespeare is one of my all-time favourite playwrights. I love how you can never really get to what he’s thinking. He can at one time seem to suggest that all is right with the universe and at another moment say something very relativistic, even nihilistic, like “there is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so.” Often in the same play!

But with his sonnets, you do feel like you edge a little closer to the man. Or do you? This is my sonnet cycle, inspired by Shakespeare’s.

THE LOVERS OF THE FIFTH PAVILION


Sonnet 1

If you were mine, I would but take the time
To take you in. I would not clock-up hours
In metaphors, hyperbole, and rhyme,
Likening you to ‘o’er-filled, abundant bowers
Of scented rose.’ I could smell you up-close!
Not ink, but you, your musk and must-have scent;  
A spray-on odour, plus a touch! Of those
Similes: ‘as’, ‘like’, ‘like as not’ – what’s meant?
Bah! Your skin would feel as it feels, not ‘like’. 
Your eyes would not compare to anything! –  
But eyes! and what eyes! eyes that live and hike
My very frame, from foot to crag, and bring …
   Nothing. For since your love is not mine, I
   Must write to live, but you will live then die. 


Sonnet 2

If you aim low you can’t be disappointed,
But you can be surprised. And so with you,
Whose presence, though not sought, was soon anointed
To an old ache despised. Say, ‘It will do’.  
For often it’s the song that sucks your breath 
That irritates with its insistent beat;   
It’s the tune that wakes slow as dragged-out death
That finally traps, as one caught in the sleet,
Upon the dark outdoors, is trapped with thirst
For wishing – hoping! – for the highest grotto,
Finds at least a shelter, and wins, not first,
But more like fifth division in a lotto.
   More than the wonderful, we’re like to kiss
   The ordinary, which is love amiss. 


Sonnet 3

Your crying calls me. Make it stop. Put pain
Aside. For when your creed is disbelief; 
And your calling, doubt; when your loves remain, 
And hates depart; when your grief’s checked and brief;
And your joy spread about, then bring forth from
The past the best you have to bear, the worst 
In your sympathising. From this will come
A moral fluidity unrehearsed,   
A calmness found beguiling. It’s the hand-
Reared foals of thought that find their legs at last,   
Nimbly rise to prance, then, with locked-knees, stand  
Firm in the cold night, their courage bronze-caste.
   Hating is easy; temperance commanding. 
   My love, it’s understanding that’s demanding.


Sonnet 4

In the first tent we saw comfortable love,
Not passion unrestrained but ‘liking’ taken
As bond in bonds. The second tent saw of
Something apart, of hearts that cannot waken
Yet, in flat-lining, hold the other cheap.
The third we glimpsed a far too-soon delight
That sure resolved of nothing quite so deep;  
Merely an incompatibility to blight
A choice, an onslaught not backed up with force. 
Whereas, inside the fourth silk canopy,        
Was a bought union, carved-up in divorce.  
And us? From under which tarp could we see?
   We were not them, the world’s great gazillion;
   We are the lovers of the fifth pavilion. 

Sonnet 5

True, though it may be so, that friends are often 
Blacker than they are gold, they glitter so
For me. The unfeigned friendship can soften
Even the well-placed and long-practiced blow.
To know you don’t just subsist where you stand,   
But in bits spread out, across, and through friends
Is comfort nibbling at aloneness. Band
Together and your beginnings have ends. 
Thoughts don’t only quicken forth to hit 
Your skin’s perimeter but, through expression,
Subtle, divined, leaves in their hearts to sit, 
Perhaps not you, but as clear an impression.  
   Since, while we can’t make our souls understood,
   We’ll make them felt, which is as near as good.

Sonnet 6

Do not add to your darkness with Sweet-scented
Sorrow, partake of the Pipe of Nostalgia-
Blue, quaff the Lime Coolness of Love Prevented, 
Or guts the Bread of Oven-baked Neuralgia. 
For often, as we jaunt into despair,
Our minds seek further wretchedness, is if
The present woe were not enough to bear.
(Forewarned of stink, most men will take a whiff).
Goaded and taunted, we can be quick to war,
And warring thus, a flesh and bullet tryst
Can soon outlend the fast-defended shore 
A red-lipped visage where no lips are kissed.  
   Call back your troops! the boatloads you have ferried!
   For graves are dug when men need not be buried. 


Sonnet 7

We’re fuel to the inefficient machine
Of humankind – where love is wasted. Strands
Of us, who spill too much with our obscene 
Industrial gloves, like gumboots for hands,    
Are soon siphoned off to sea to move as
Paper on water, subject to each wave;
Wet right-through, our typed histories are, alas,
As unassuming as a covered grave.
Yet some, rewriting themselves on the shore,
Take up their tools, and reapply their skills.
Steaming in from the cold, the factory floor
No longer traps their gloves or stronger wills,
   Since in us are all the cares and pleasures shown
   Of a people who have known pain and grown.


Sonnet 8

Right from that night, our first encounter, we
had things to clear up, points to qualify.
Some were small matters, indubitably,
like who had said what, and meant what, and why.
But questions were followed by questions, and
answers clarifications. Between gloats, 
much was said in parenthesis, aband- 
oned, and finally appended to notes.    
Even then, we might have adduced truth from
truth, had we not been unrolling our tongues.
Our words spat, drowning together in foam,  
We surfaced, emptying up words from our lungs.  
   We’d made the dawn light, declared our work done; 
   But can a new day be the one begun? 


Sonnet 9

Strange what was told and true, strange what I never
Knew, strange how nothing ever found me. Strange,
Too, how the bold and new, as one, could sever 
Through both the lied and tried, with will, and change, 
The old arrange, could re-arrange, then die.
Strange when I could never change, one become, 
To have had with and done, what passed me by,
What I could never try, what I fled from, 
What I believed was wrong, while nothing right
Could brighten night, and yet the day’s exchange
Of pain occurred and reoccurred with might 
And range. But most of all, strange what was strange
   Was me, what we don’t see, till we do see,
   That what was strange was true, what was bold, free.


Sonnet 10

As carriages come coupled, so we two; now
Tracking the tee-pee prints of pelican, 
Now spying it on sea (sanded-flat), how
Its folded umbrella beak, smudged Siam,
Is type-faced twice in the reflecting polish. 
Shunting shy of our sea-side voyage, we
(Our twin jaws masticating gum in dullish  
Smacks), turn off inland, but are marred by me,
Who must recall the first taste of the squall
Compared to the preserved reserve of now, 
While you, unflustered, bid me to recall 
That I, who’s chewed his mint to paste, avow
   That though the taste of gum won’t last the night,
   The substance of it – that provides the fight.


Sonnet 11

If you write, you’re not just a tourist through
Life, but a journalist on assignment. That
Way, everything’s material, which means you
Are, of course, cut off from your pain, yet at-
Tenuated to your joy, all by simply
Grafting each into a tale. You can thus view
The world with less flushed, more full-coloured, dimply
Cheek. After all, it’s cud for you to chew: 
Bad moments appeal, boring times appal,
People are characters, places locations,
Disasters are sexy but, best of all,
Exchanges are potential ‘situations’.
   So go on, write, improving on what’s real, 
   By giving form where bad form is the deal. 


Sonnet 12

What world is this, where honesty competes
With avarice, but neither one defeats 
The other? Where poor live alongside rich –  
Yet rich in scope? It’s hard to tell who’s which. 
What world that can as easily create
As pull apart, commingling love and hate?
Though doctors tend the wounds, what dearth of skill
To dull the pain, yet fail to cure the ill. 
Why is it so? The world has means but aim …?
None! What absence, this, in those who proclaim
To feel? I can’t explain, no, not unless
It’s that their hearts are full of emptiness. 
   There is no happiness for when it’s true
   It’s knowing other folks are happy, too.


Sonnet 13

What does it mean to dream? What have you got
To show for what you know? Where did it go?
With eyes closed to see you, I see it’s not
Alright, no, it is not alright, I know.
Dispassionately itemising years   
(Days doubled up, shows rehashed, meals reheated),
Time demonstrates the outcome in arrears:  
Old loves repeated, the heart’s heart unseated,
And opportunities for life, once strong,
Depleted. Yet though we’ve reached the same ground,
Can we both see it through, survive, live long
Enough to die? No, this is what I’ve found:
   The fruit and feather fall at the same rate;
   One is crushed, one is tickled by its fate.


Sonnet 14

Say, if you lost me would you find me? Would 
Every long face remind you of the one
You left behind? Would you turn ‘should’ from ‘could’
To ‘will’? make your ‘do’ inviolably ‘done’?
And your ‘most definitely’ definite,
Not ‘maybe’? For as life matures with age,  
So too does patience fritter, and sharp wit
Gets ranked below consistency and sage,
Wise ways. Think of those endless afternoons 
That we so vainly tried to keep alive –  
Even our friendships have their honeymoons,
And if they crack when cooled, they won’t survive. 
   So here we are, each as alone and blue,   
   Still looking for the newer ‘thing to do’.


Sonnet 15

When someone breaks up with you it is like
They have died, and you too a bit, but they, 
They really do step away from the mic,
And join the backstage of ghosts. Yet why say 
They’re dead? They’re dead because you can no longer	
Check with hugs they’re warm, with kisses they breathe. 
While they grow faint, hope – pray – that you grow stronger,
Because how, oh yes how, the heart can seethe. 
By ‘they’, of course, I mean you, you my gem, 
Who, even at our best, those nights out dancing  
I vainly tried with a little ‘ahem’,
But past my head you were always glancing
   Too wide to see me but not to apprise 
   The next ghost waiting to materialise.    


Sonnet 16

I was happy once but it didn’t last. 
But that’s okay ’cause I had seen it coming
Anyway and departing just as fast. 
I was content awhile, inaudibly strumming
Your guitar but the strings broke, and no joke,
My fingers lost their calluses before
I fitted softer nylon ones that spoke
More gently still, but boy my hands were sore. 
Looking down at puddles, seeing your head
In clouds, don’t close your eyes to what’s not there. 
For you it is that brings the rain, and dread 
Of rain is not so frightening or so rare. 
   Though happy once, we knew it couldn’t last.
   But that’s okay, the future’s in our past. 


Sonnet 17

Against that time when we no more will part,
In shoring up my strength, I place a curse on 
Our friendship’s reign, for know this in your heart,
That people part in spirit before in person. 
Whilst some friends do stay, greater numbers pass
Through our lives and onwards, as we through theirs;
For mutual sake, presume not to let glass  
Division crack what was in memory fair.
Alighting on the corner of the street
Where the sunset bequests an afterglow,
Each stands like cups of coffee losing heat
Only the tepid milkiness can know.
   We met when we both had a cab to share;
   Transaction done, each hails his separate fair.


Sonnet 18

My honour, chief of motes within your eyes;      
(Your lycanthropy comfort, greatest grief)   
Through changing with each change, a ‘something’ dies,
Savaged, but not to death, becomes the thief;
Against which, to ensconce you here, my moon
Could wax or wane but never full appear.
Within the audit of your heart, the noon
Ends in the slow engendering of a fear.
The fear’s that you, in muted admonition
Are left the prey of vulgar preying things,
While I, impressed by the self-same volition, 
Recall: a rat is just a bat without the wings. 
   The victim turns to villain in his spite; 
   Completes the ring, with overlapping bite. 


Sonnet 19

Here is my paradox: I want the money
My art will one day make in order to
Be able to make it, which, far from funny,
Conjures the base conundrum young ones rue:
Ambition sans experience. Once, verse 
Used to grow obscure with age; now it’s born
Obscure. Since my wordplay makes sense, the worse 
For me. (New coats want patches to be worn!?)
This plainness is imputed to be weakness.
Rather, it is my glory, being plain,
When others, oiling hackneyed words past sleekness, 
Let slip a shawl on nothing, being vain
   Of vapidness which they deem of high worth.
   In wiring for power, one may fail to earth.


Sonnet 20

A beacon of redress, you saw my ship
In past the shoals – the morning light remembers.
Life? love...? – neither’s fair! The days now slip
Away, and new years bring in new Decembers.
Feeling you fall asleep beneath my arm,
Joining you where you go a moment later – 
Or do I? Woken up by my alarm. 
Is the smell friendly or familiar, laughter
Mirthful or mad? They say what I had willed
Men mad before the drugs we haply know.
But misery keeps pace with progress. Billed
As modern – paranoia’s timeless, though.   
   In my dreams, I’m winning; in my life, trying; 
   In my weeks I’m living; in each day, dying.  


Sonnet  21

In being who I am, yet nothing more,
My frontier grasp the limit of my world,
Would I could abscond myself and keep score,
Out of man’s reach, but men’s arms are hurled. 
I staged a funeral in my brain, that all
Would come. Now, many decades later, I
Have seen a ghost, just one. She, when I so small
Have shrunk, seems such a healthy wraith, so spry
And tall. Out here among the risk-averse,
The difficulty’s following the map.
Alive, our presence is a stinging slap;
Dead, we bleed back into the universe.
   I staged a funeral once, that all would come;
   She lives in others’ thoughts, while I in one. 


Sonnet 22

Was I pet, not friend, your home’s clawed defence?
Surely I was not bought for looks and breeding?
Was I my beloved ball, thrown over fence,
Along with newer gadgets, superseding?
How could my fortunes reduce from a lark,
A Christmas whim, a cute contentment, to
Merely a walking chore and backyard bark? 
Unbathed, unclipped, ungroomed, cold through – 
Was it any wonder I should turn tail
And run, turned to a missing soul unmissed,
My pinscher nose pushed past both grief and rail,
To hands recoiled, my wagging hope dismissed? 
   That is your human love, first flushed, then pensive.
   But I am old, and vet’s bills expensive.


Sonnet 23

Suburbia. The lights go out at ten, the curfew
For those who work. Houses are people’s best
Facade. The only neighbours who are sure to        
Meet are the ones who walk their dogs. The rest
Must get in cars, the way that fleas make jumps.
An un-mowed lawn means trouble. Backyard pools
Are either blue oases or green swamps.
The TV is the aged member who drools,
The PlayStation the young who kills in scores.
Fences keep out as much as they enclose.
Telegraph lines beam out both hopes and bores.
New days resemble those which they depose.
   In life there is no total loss or win,
   So we must, as we once began, begin.


Sonnet 24

Lips that would argue, when they most would kiss,
Are traitor lips, confounding mind and ears. 
Myself misleading, leading you amiss,
The days defer to weeks, and months to years.
Your physical compassion, being bare,
Better becomes you than the mental thoughts
I can conceive of you but do not bear,
Being more mindful of the ifs than oughts.
I feel your life, your life’s in mine, which grows
More sacred as the final countdown nears; 
Climbing toward the light that no one knows,
Bringing with it brief ignorance of fear.
   But still that question – between bodies – curled –   
   Should we, darling, bring death into this world?


Sonnet 25

We’re born prostrate, we die prostrate, and take
As little or as long between those points.  
Sleep readies us for when we never wake,
A date which time and circumstance appoints. 
Only the pretty passing years can prove
Our love is more than fleeting mirth and can  
In eddying verse remain at one remove   
Where future lovers may our love lines scan.  
Is it wrong to long for you with such strong 
Fervour? For when you’re away I can’t say
How much the taste, touch, haste of you belong
Here to make waste of me, which I repay
   By being me, which only I can know,
   But which you guess, and guessing, go. 


Sonnet 26

What is the truth that matters? And just where
The wait that ends? Don’t want to say you’ll live,
Un-merry Silence, for to care’s not to share
But to pretend. And while the shady spiv
Can promise ointments, the clairvoyant hope,
Death honours its contracts above all. Bought 
Life lengthens out, is fed, spans like a rope
But, like a hangman’s noose, pulls taught. 
Yet who can say how he would face the end 
Unless he’d faced it? Who’d not wish more time
To court the life he’d dreamed of or amend
The life he’s living — simply, to pretend?   
   How rarely we remember we’re alive;
   The great concern in life is to survive. 


Sonnet 27

I ask you, sane ones, who would be a poet?
I only wish that from the marsh I’m dredged.
Years living with inventiveness, who’d know it?
My talent’s prefaced with the word ‘alleged’.
Just one among the jury, that is all, 
Just one to doubt the verdict and attest
My claim; one doubtful juror, make the call, 
Corroborate my plea, and drag the rest.
As suspects plead, so plead I, please try my
Case and decide, if staying, or passed by,
If ‘known of’, ‘not known,’ I will die? But why
Whinge? For if knowing knows no slaking, I 
   Suppose obscureness proves I’ve not sold out—
   Plea-bargained a book-deal… but I’ll hold out.


Sonnet 28

So many things keep us down, but we won’t 
Be gagged and bound, we won’t be down, the down
That’s never-ending. For to have a high  
We must fall further than we fly, and die, 
Die with day/night blending. Knowing this is it,
This finite moment now our greatest hit,
How can we rise thereafter? For the way
We feel is not the way we look or stay 
Since everything is passing. Somehow, we
Were none of us one of us and, in the
Moment, alone, but all and separate. Rhymes
We once owned. That’s what happened to those times
   That weren’t as good as we remember! Try
   Not to cry: even as we live we die. 


Sonnet 29

‘Grow old – but not too quickly. Stay young – never
‘Forever. Look in, outwardly. Look out,
‘In.’ Such fine sophistry! Can it ever 
Make us wise, good? Or merely sponsor doubt? 
Earth would corrupt a saint yet saints are earth-
Bound prior to attaining saintliness. 
That paradoxes can exist says worth
In absolutes is absent… more or less.
Things are both right and wrong; true and untrue;
Fanciful, fact; small, big; familiar, strange.
With each new thought we’re born anew,
Just as we die each moment that we change. 
   I cherish life those moments that I give;
   For those I don’t, I’d die, the others, live. 

 
Sonnet 30

With you I tried harder than with the rest, 
Because in you was more, but some of which
Was harder than would – could – yield; now the best
I have to show is nothing since you’d ditch
It all before retaining just one part.
Never room temperature; either soft snow
Worn like a shawl, or fire burning all; Heart
Has nothing, not mere friendship, left to know. 
We might have achieved what neither would — will —
Alone. Together, divided; divided, 
Half. Half the time we spent in mirth, half ill
With fighting still. If you had just abided
   The small defects, Fortune would not bewail her 
   Making us meet. Nothing succeeds like failure. 


Sonnet 31

When you meet someone new, you see their best.
The rest you make up (defend from their side)
But let time put fantasy to the test, 
Invariably the truth won’t coincide. 
So, with romance dead, that’s the time to sever
ties. Every ‘Happy Ever After’ has 
a sequel rarely (almost nearly never)
as good (and usually much more costly). As
love is not knowing someone, a relat–
ionship’s what you want when you’re not in one,
not when you are. And when the strongest hate
is made from strongest love, and passion un–
   limited quickly has its limits, choose    
   to retire hurt; that way you can’t lose. 


Sonnet 32

Contrasting stories count at different ages
And stages of your life – you’re not the same. 
Your old and young selves – they’d read separate pages
Of even the same newspaper. The game
On Saturday might interest one, the interest
Rates the other. It makes you think of hit-
Ting items that you’ve missed, and that the test
Of self is less what you read than omit. 
For who were we before we met? Friends tried
To introduce us a year earlier. Fazed,
We each declined with, ‘I’m preoccupied.’ 
What if we now met, our short time erased?
   Would we look up the same news of the age 
   Or, having changed, be on a separate page?  


Sonnet 33

I want to know but not so I don’t know.
I want to fade, but none too slowly. True,
I want to lie, but not in shadow. Show
Me how to sleep, to take the death that’s due.
But long before you do, I want to look
In your heart, I want to know who you are,
And who, in me, you knew. I want to brook
The tide till I know who I am… so far. 
I want to reach but, reaching nothing, not
Despair. I want to care and not to care.
I want to journey out but when the rot  
Settles in, settle down and know it’s fair. 
   So who am I to you and who are you
   To me, and does it matter, make it true? 


Sonnet 34

Wish this poem weren’t ice cool but red hot. 
Wish it were a love poem but it’s not. 
Wish I could say I need you but I don’t,
And I’ve a horrid sentiment I won’t.
Wish I could say that it was every day
That I thought of you but there is no way – 
It’s every second day at most. Wish I 
Could lie and tell you I would likely die 
If you were to leave me, so leave me ’cause
I won’t. What have we ever really shared?
If I said nasty things it was because 
I meant them, lover, not because I cared.    
   And yet I do care! And so it’s quite plain,
   That’s much the same as saying we’re insane. 


Sonnet 35

I never meant to ignore you. I never 
Meant not to say hello or even try.
I never could have meant to hurt you, ever;  
I never meant anything, that’s why.
I never meant to get this way. Each day
It was tomorrow, yes, tomorrow, but
I guess that is what anyone can say,
While thin grows the hair, and distends the gut. 
I didn’t know the knowingness of one
Who knows his luck and can show gratitude. 
Then, I believed my pose superior, won;
Now I can see that it was mainly rude.
  I struggled with the whole and with each part;
  The weak arrhythmic drumming of the heart. 


Sonnet 36

When I do think how selfish is my dream
(These many long years for which I’ve worked),
Expensive and selfish to the extreme,
When most have needs but I have wants; when irked
With wanting when I have, and wondering whence
This greediness stems from, then do I call   
All affluence a kind of effluence;
And my desire for fictions, worst of all.
‘If I could make a film!’ I make a calling;
Self-centredness, unwavering scope; want fishes
And loaves from air; and, most galling,
Put the direst need that fuels most people’s wishes 
   Against the abstraction for which I’ve striven
   And learn but this: we go for chances given. 


Sonnet 37

In finding someone, how much of ourselves
Is lost? Occasionally I see who I was
And might have been. In secret, each one delves
Into this parallel retreat because…?
Because! Because one time, one place, one you,
And one me. We have known opprobrium, times
Dis- and continuous. We’ve known good times, too. 
But we don’t know this: how much we miss chimes
Down the hours. Who were we before we met? 
You: delicate, cool; me: troubled, a fool?
Waking from that dream, we forget
Ourselves. Resentment’s where our longings pull. 
   The irony of choice is that, in choosing,
   You see all options – everything you’re losing.


Sonnet 38

We sat down at my house, my dress a run-off
For all the things you said. Wish I knew better
By now, the grey hiding in my hair. No one-off
Mistake – the same, and followed to the letter. 
While jasmine trimmed the windowsill, smoke killed
The air, I knew then never would I wall
Myself within another’s prison. Filled
With daring finally, I stood up tall – 
Brief waterfall! Alive, but… have I lived?
And when I’m dead, who then will tell the gold
From all the dull-toned pebbles that I’ve sieved?
Time to atone. For back when I was old,
   Far better chances came knocking at my door. 
   But now that I am young, I’m young no more… 
         

Sonnet 39

If one could call up times as one revisits
Places, what change in changeless faces! What  
Fun were miserable times! Nostalgia is its
Own country, and remembering leaves traces. But
To love is to expose oneself to grief, 
and grief to heartache, heartache to dead-
ening reluctance to love again. Leif
would I change that, if to change that, meant, wed-
-ded to you in all but bureaucratic stamp,
I'd not be. Even though we’ll never find
The happiness we wanted so, the amp-
-litud, we've lived, and living, loving, grind
   Towards the dark, that we, and others, sow...
   Toward the dark, the only light we know. 


Sonnet 40

I get the feeling that I can’t go on,
While you clutch at the hope that I belong. 
I get the sense that I’ve already left,
But stay, leaving the both of us bereft. 
I’ve got to, got to go, I know, I’ve got 
To go away, I’ve got to leave today.
Sometimes I feel, I feel sometimes, I’m not
Quite right — how you respond to what I say   
Says something, something about how, how what
I do, do to you, isn’t always nice,  
it's true. I think of pills, doctors, the lot
Warring with my mind that’s melting/freezing ice
   And know: when I see your love turn to hate,
   They cannot cure me; only medicate.


Sonnet 41

The vows we make in passion
Next week are last week’s fashion.
Less by hope are we buoyed,
Than by that which we avoid. 
Pain’s not censored one smidge
While whole lives are abridged. 
Rather than go down by trying,
We prefer survival, lying
That this is still a life.  That this
Is all there ever was or is. 
That this is something we could miss,
That this still bubbles, sans the fizz. 
    And what of love? Love seethes, heaves
    Heraclitean fire… then leaves. 


Sonnet 42

I try to recollect us at our best;
I try, though my heart heaves up to my mouth;
I try, now that one of us is at rest – 
Try ever so hard, in this wretched drouth. 
There was that camping trip down to Lake Eildon
Where we took snaps of the drowned, waving trees,
And yet, in that short joy, the memory yields one
Additional frame, of your own sad pleas. 
But I must – more than ever! – learn to yank
The good from the bad, for the bad just slaughters
The end of that day, when we raised glasses to thank
The sun’s shadow on the dark heaving waters.
    For we’d managed a pose: two broad grins, dreaming:
    This was eternity! And all else…? Seeming. 


Sonnet 43

Lately I find I’m blubbing quite a lot
And tell myself that I’m okay, than I’m
Okay, but I’m not. Lately I find what
Used to keep me upright, keep me on time,
keeps everything else going but my mind.
Lately I find the faith I never had, but 
built regardless, is less one stilt, and kind-
ness is the worst to bear — makes my chest a knot —
And my hardness I misplace and can’t begin
To get the motion needed to define
A self that’s undefined by loss and win —
A bearing that will heart to hope incline.
   Lately, I think of everything I’m not; 
   Not of all things, of everything I’ve got. 


Sonnet 44

You said you’d haunt me when you die. It’s true, 
You haunt me, by the by. Such as when I take
Our dog to our loved places, like the lake. 
I say your name, and she still looks for you. 
You said you’d help me from the grave. It’s true,
Most of our joint dreams are yet to be made. 
But that we made many, even in thought, 
Has brought me more joy than any sort bought. 
You said without me, I would be so lonely. 
I was lonely with you… but not each day. 
You said to me simply, in a dream, ‘If only…’ 
And I understood: ‘…things had gone our way.’ 
    It’s that shared thinking that makes me glad,
    Like you, we met. Then, together, we’re sad. 


Sonnet 45

I close my eyes and see the scene again. 
See when you and me veered the craggy rough,
And watched, as waves beat Pulpit Rock, and then,
Inhaling, ventured further down the bluff.
Those waves, like sheer bulldozer ploughs, 
Petered out at the jumble of smooth pebbles.
Worn like a band around the neck of sand,
How they jiggled, jostled, in joyful trebles.  
Alone now, I open my eyes to see
The same undying ocean, the same might
Of all that force and motion, unduly
Beating itself upon the beleaguered bight.  
    Then, as each wave rolls back, a thousand streams
    Strip the seashell cliffs, delicate as dreams.