Lenten Sonnets (Second Post)

This will be the third religious post in a row. I try to avoid that, since I know I do have some non-religious readers (and readers for whom reading about religion might be boring, which may not have the same members as the former group). But anyway, here's another sonnet, one that is maybe more accurate in sentiment than the previous one I posted.

3

And when you fast, he said, do not look dreary,
Like hypocrites, for they deform their faces
To show the world that they with fast are weary;
They have received at least their promised places.
And when you fast, put oil upon your head,
And wash your face, so that your fast may not
Be seen by others, by the Father read
Alone, who will reward you with your lot.
But God, complaint is my preferred expression;
Moaning is my wine, griping my bread.
I publicize my woes as harsh oppression
And groan until the time of fast has fled.
I ask you, God, to turn my pouts to graces
And fashion patient psalms from painful traces.

Lenten Sonnets (First Post)

This Lent I am supposedly writing a sonnet for each day. I say supposedly because I haven't been very good lately. I can still catch up though--I might do that this Saturday. At any rate, as a bit of motivation to continue this practice, I will post one that I wrote last year up here. My attempt last year failed horribly, so I'm using the few I did write as a bit of a buffer. This is the second in my sequence so far.

2

This fasting is a desert we escape
Into together; we, like Jacob, walk
The sandy paths of penitence and ape
Our loss amidst the plains of ash and chalk.
The Promised Land, our distant Canaan, lies
Out there, ahead, a season’s journey hence;
Invisible beyond the rocks and sky,
Oasis lost among mirages dense.
But that the Lord once met temptation here,
This waste would not be sacred; by walking we
Do consecrate this barrenness each year
And shape from dust cathedrals bare and free.
In wilderness we make a stony altar
Which will both fast and wand’ring faster alter.

Theoretical Sonnet I

For a seminar I had to summarize Derrida's "Signature, Event, Context"; after I completed that assignment, I decided to do it again in the form of a sonnet. (To those who don't know, even lit theory nerds who disagree with Derrida still get a little bit enamoured, enough to do silly things like write a sonnet about one of his essays.) I found this exercise very helpful, and I might try it again with other theorists.

I'm not sure how much this is worth to you if you aren't already somewhat familiar with Derrida (a deconstructivist), but at any rate I thought I'd put it here, just in case.

Final disclaimer: I'm not saying that I agree with everything Derrida says; this is a summary, not a statement of my opinion.

I sing my song of Derrida; this dry
And second thing communicates to thee,
My absent reader, that this sonnet’s free,
And I, with my intent and context, die.
This place from which I write, you cannot scry,
Nor can I know what meaning you can see,
Nor whether eyes to tears shall movèd be;
To origins quotation shan’t comply.
This sonnet, then, does not communicate;
Could speech? Ah, no, for words of tumbling air
Can only mean in language spoken late
By others, diff’ring concepts here and there.
Speech and writing, each such stratagem
Can graft again upon another stem.

"The Spring Poem"

When this weekend ends, my life will resemble something sane again. Perhaps I will be a better blogger at that point. In the meantime, here is a poem:

The Spring Poem
Dave Smith

Every poet should write a Spring poem.
--Louise Glück

Yes, but we must be sure of verities
such as proper heat and adequate form.
That's what poets are for, is my theory.
This then is a Spring poem. A car warms
its rusting hulk in a meadow; weeds slog
up its flanks in martial weather. April
or late March is our month. There is a fog
of spunky mildew and sweat tufts spill
from the damp rump of the back seat. A spring
thrusts one gleaming tip out, a brilliant tooth
uncoiling from Winter's tension, a ring
of insects along, working out the Truth.
Each year this car, melting around that spring,
hears nails trench from boards and every squeak sing.

7 Quick Takes (62)

1. I watched some movies last weekend: Splice and Eve and the Fire Horse.

Splice is a Canadian bio-horror movie about a pair of sceintists who make designer organisms for a living. They decide at one point to (illegally) experiment with human DNA and create a human-hybrid named Dren. As Dren grows up, maturing in ways completely unexpected, she becomes harder and harder to keep a secret . . . and harder and harder to manage.

It's a pretty good movie, especially considering that it's Canadian-made; it's creepy, and builds suspense without much violence or gore for most of the movie. But about two-thirds of the way through the movie it gets disturbing, fast. Let's just say that the characters who made Dren have some issues themselves. And let's just say that inter-species sex will always be uncomfortable at best. (And I just got myself some weird visitors from Google again.)

Eve and the Fire Horse is also Canadian-made, about two girls, Eve and Karena, who live with their parents in Vancouver in the 1960s. Their parents have immigrated from China, and Eve (the protagonist) and Karena live in a hodge-podge world of "Chinese superstition" (what an awful name for that religious tradition, by the way), Confucianism, Buddhism, and poorly-understood Catholicism. It's in the style of Big Fish in some ways, with flights of imagination unfolding before your eyes. I suppose you would call it magic realism? Anyway, it deals with racism, family dynamics, guilt and grief, and spiritual life. I might write a proper review of it some day.

2. At church, they played Disney songs for hymns. If this interests you, I wrote out the service at this post.

3. I discovered Gerard Manley Hopkins this week. Some of his poetry was assigned in the class I am a TA for. Hopkins (1844-1889) was a Jesuit priest, and his sonnets are beautiful, rich, and complex; they require a good dictionary, and are worth it. I encourage you to take a look at them.

"The Starlight Night"

Look at the stars! look, look up at the skies!

O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!

The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there!

Down in dim woods the diamond delves! the elves'-eyes!

The grey lawns cold where gold, where quickgold lies!

Wind-beat whitebeam! airy abeles set on a flame!

Flake-doves sent floating forth at a farmyard scare! --

Ah well! it is all a purchase, all is a prize.

Buy then! bid then! -- What? -- Prayer, patience, alms, vows.
Look, look: a May-mess, like on orchard boughs!

Look! March-bloom, like on mealed-with-yellow-sallows!

These are indeed the barn; withindoors house

The shocks. This piece-bright paling shuts the spouse

Christ home, Christ and his mother and all his hallows.

4. I also discovered Erasmus Darwin's The Loves of the Plants. Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802) was the grandfather of Charles Darwin and a celebrated botanist. His The Loves of the Plants is a poetic re-writing of Linnaeus' famous work in the reproduction of plants. Linnaeus analogized stamens and pistols as men and women having romantic liaisons, and Darwin followed suit in Loves. What Darwin did differently, however, was place agency on the female characters rather than do as Linnaeus did and put agency in the male characters. This work would be very very fruitful for gender studies on a number of levels, but one of the more immediately interesting is that female polyamory shows up time and time again:

Two brother swains, of COLLIN'S gentle name,
The same their features, and their forms the same,

With rival love for fair COLLINIA sigh,

Knit the dark brow, and roll the unsteady eye.

With sweet concern the pitying beauty mourns,

And sooths with smiles the jealous pair by turns.

[later]

With vain desires the pensive ALCEA burns,

And, like sad ELOISA, loves and mourns.

The freckled IRIS owns a fiercer flame,

And three unjealous husbands wed the dame.

An interesting formal note is that Darwin's footnotes, which explain the botany behind the poem, take up more space on the page then the poem itself.

5. I did a lot of picture-taking today, and I am exhausted from the walking. I really wanted to get the autumn colours in the Nitobe Gardens and on Wreck Beach. (Will upload shortly.)

For more 7 Quick Takes, visit the host of the carnival, Jen Fulwiler at Conversion Diary.

Once Again, On Hope

The days seem ever dark'ning; ev'ning sweeps
In earlier without a sign of solstice.
Fluorescent lights in living rooms are poultice,
Perhaps, to growing gloom, but ever weeps
The war-time widow; martyrs' mothers cry,
And oaks fall groaning down, while minds are frayed
And newborns' parts are badly misarrayed
And genes with last and lonely beasts will die.
But if we find a light sufficient strong
To pierce that dulling darkness, would it blind?
Would we who see that beam therefore not find
The horrors still alive, and hope in wrong?
Activity sees clearer worn with care,
But hope's a better star than cold despair.

Karen asked me to write another post on hope, and, lacking much to say about the matter, I decided to write a sonnet on it. The sonnet's structure (octet, volta, sestet; 8-4-2; abbacddcefefgg or variant) often helps me give structure to my own thoughts on a topic. Anyway, what I produced perhaps gives the feel as well as one can hope in an hour's endeavour, but it doesn't much illuminate the logic, which I feel I must go into here. I warn you that my discussions of hope are not as "hopeful" as Karen's or Jon's.

I am of course indebted to Yolanda for my current thoughts on hope; specifically, she linked an article which discussed the pros and cons. The fear I have is three-fold: first, that hope is in the end vain, as we're doomed; second, that hope blinds us to problem errors which we then don't address; third, that if we give too much to hope we rely on it, and on luck, to make things better, and not work ourselves. The trouble is that despair or apathy don't do much good, either. As Karen points out, attempt is a prerequisite to success, and as Jon points out, hope is sometimes all that gets you out of bed in the morning. (A sense of duty, actually, is what gets me out of bed, but I recognize that some people might need something a little less old-fashioned.) Despair is blinding, too; either we give up altruism and become selfish, or we give up entirely and await destruction.

I was discussing this with a friend in Ontario, sitting in the sun and drinking a Chai Latte. In the face of defeat, do we give up? What is our cultural drive? Tolkein thought that we lacked the Scandinavians' determination, the sheer will that allowed Thor and Odin to plunge into Ragnarok, the final war, knowing full well that they would lose. He tried to elaborate on this ethic in The Lord of the Rings. My friend said she thought this was not absent but in the cultural mindset, a persistance inspite of overwhelming odds, and I wonder if perhaps this means that Tolkein succeeded. At any rate, I think that there is something to be said for trying utterly despite entertaining no hope that you will succeed. Trying in spite of defeat. The trouble is that we will survive our defeat; Odin had the luxury of dying at the end of the world. We may live to suffer the consequences of environmental apocalypse, continuing war in the Middle East, continuing tyranny in China, etc. We cannot afford to let hope to blind us to the possibility that we may fail, and we must be prepared to deal with failure when it comes.

But Huston Smith said that heroic fortitude is not something you can prescribe upon the masses, and I must agree. Many of us--myself included--need hope to let us go on each day. What we then must do is be aware that our hope is perhaps misguided, that our hope can blind us to real problems, that our hope can convince us to relax when we can't afford to. If we are aware that hope can do this, if we can hold hope in one hand and urgency in another, perhaps we can manage to do what we need to and remain sane. I'm not sure.

But note that it must hope and urgency, not hope and despair. Despair is destructive. It can therefore destroy our complacency, but just as we mustn't let it keep hold on us. It is only good if it destroys what is deadly to us and allows us to build anew, build with hope.

Planaria

In murky ponds your flattened lengths you hide,

Your heads like tender diamonds gazing dim

'Long logs you use as cover for your slim

And soft bodies, your vision feeble-eyed.

Your race's many members creep in streams

Around this world, yet we the treading swains,

Whose errors cut upon you ample pain,

Do little know your cross-eyed, broken dreams.

Yet every brokenness will yield another

You, from your wound; each fragment blooms into

A separate self. A cloven head's now two

That share a body branching. Quarrels mother

You clones who split your lengths by pulling free;

You worms will grow through love--and injury.

Yup. Planaria are funny little critters.

This is more emphatically a draft than usual. If anyone is out there, interested in contributing, I have a question: do you prefer the fourth line as it is, or would you prefer to see it, "And soft bodies, with tiny muscles filled inside."? Further, would the twelfth line be better as it is, or rendered, "That share a branching body."? Other critiques also welcome.

I had wanted to do more with this, but I often find that sonnets hold less than I anticipate they will, so I have to make due. Perhaps I could write another planaria sonnet, one that should follow immediately after in the sequence, which discusses how sexual reproduction is more genetically beneficial than asexual reproduction... and, yet, asexual reproduction seems to directly benefit those planaria who get injured, since they reproduce their genes exactly. It might be worth another sonnet.

Actually, an aubadina might work well for this subject. Shame it's not a real tradition.

Tetramorium caespitum

or, Pavement Ant

You march with many sisters, Amazon.
Across your desert mount you track your twin
In rushed obedience to now begin
The second hill to bring adherents on
This upper plain, for war against your foes.
Of your six limbs you give but empty care;
For queen and colony alone you bear
The unexamined burdens, senseless blows.
If thinking were your province, then would you
Forsake your bloody kind? Does thought condone
That social animals desire to be alone?
Would reason force the end of selfless crews?
What fate's the maid's who lacks a queen to give
Her harvest to, and guards her chance to live?

Forficula auricularia

or, The European Earwig

Your body lithe, you swim in dying leaves,
A hunter seeking moribund remains,
In reeking flowers, dumps, and swollen eaves,
Devouring pests and, lacking them, our grains.
Translucent legs and vested wings your weeds,
Which nightly you parade as ghoulish gown,
Not down those tunnels that your naming reads,
Though still provoking fear with pinching crown.
But 'neath the wintry earth you lay your clutch
In chambers underground, and tending turn
Your eggs to forestall mould, and mother much
Those white nymphs who in spring your ways will learn.
From humankind you've found but constant strife;
Yet buried under death, you raise up life.

4 March 2010, Fort McMurray

For some reason earwigs have always fascinated me; their bodies seem so graceful, their browns so glowing and clear. I used to be afraid of them, but I'm not any more. If they pinch me, it's my own fault for handling them. However, I recognize how other people are afraid of them. I've wanted to write a sonnet on them for some time and, after researching them on Wikipedia and letting the ideas percolate for a few days, something finally came to me. I was meditating on the form of the sonnet, and the above structure resulted.

Lines broken to reflect pauses in reading:

Your body lithe,
you swim in dying leaves,
a hunter seeking moribund remains in reeking flowers
dumps
and swollen eaves,
devouring pests
and, lacking them,
our grains.

Translucent legs and vested wings your weeds
which nightly you parade as ghoulish gown,
not down those tunnels that your naming reads,
though still provoking fear with pinching crown.

But 'neath the wintery earth
you lay your clutch in chambers underground
and tending turn your eggs to forestall mould
and mother much those white nymphs
who in spring your ways will learn.

From human kind you've found but constant strife;
Yet buried under death
you raise up life.

Maybe the Most Horrific Thing I Have Ever Written

or, A Sonnet

I had been wanting to write a sonnet to Forficula auricularia (a la writing a sonnet to Cepaea nemoralis, seen here), but so far I have no idea how to proceed. However, my eyes glancing across my room, I happened to see Pride and Prejudice and Zombies sitting, as of yet unread, on my desk. A perfectly ghoulish inversion of sonnet conventions stuck me, in which the speaker's beloved mistress spurns him until she is turned into the living dead, at which point she is more than interested in consummating their not-so-mutual interests. Needless to say, I succumbed. What lies (or rather limps, or shambles) before you is the unfortunate result.

***

Zealous you pursue me, who, when 'live,

Of your alluring self you cruelly starved;

My love for you unslaked, in wood I carved

Beloved name of you who'd me deprived.
I craved your blinking eyes, your sable mane,

Each limping joke and, more than all, your brain.

Must now you answer diff'rently than when

In blushing breast your heart still pump'd out life?

So far have I avoided your love-bites;

This time I will surrender you to other men,

Releasing them 'gainst Laz'rus-aping you as wife;

Except I know you'll come for me some hunted night.

So I must ask, Will I, when meeting you undead,
Still loving, die? Or yet remove your maidenhead?

***

1 point for each sonnet convention or early modern pun that you can find.

1 point for each allusion to a zombie movie/comic/video game/haiku that you can find.

5 points if you can find the sonnet's hidden name.

I am dreadfully sorry about writing this. But maybe not so sorry that I won't post it.

I promise that my next sonnet will be a serious one.

Cepaea nemoralis

or, The Grove Snail

You little nomads, keep your secrets banked
Inside your yellow Atlas-shoulder stores,
And hide within those rounds your patient lores,
Enclosed among your kind, disliked, unthanked.
Or pass between you glacial wisdom, slow-footed news.
At leafy caravanaries you trade
Among your gradual people, from gardens strayed;
To them reveal your gospel, them, in conch-like pews.
You are tucked, your puckered foot is bare.
I pluck you from my palm and you unfurl
Your body; prongs are, like the point, in air,
A question mark, your shell the inward-questing curl.
Why trust your tender self to me, one bred
In a speed-mad world from which all wisdom's fled?

I wrote this on Monday (the 15 of Feb), on the Winter Road between Fort Chipewyan and Fort McMurray. One of the things I miss about Ontario are the snails, especially the yellow ones, which from Wikipedia I gather are Cepaea nemoralis, or grove snails. I have written about the snail's wisdom before, but I decided to try the idea again. Actually, I like some of "Eulogy for the Garden," but not the whole thing. It needs a lot of work yet, and that's something I will some day give it. In the meantime, I'll expand the snail bit in a sonnet and not free verse. As the New Englander says in The Tommyknockers, "Real poims rhyme."

Re-written, so the line-breaks match the pauses:

You little nomads,
keep your secrets banked inside your yellow Atlas-shoulder stores,
and hide within those rounds your patient lores,
enclosed among your kind,
disliked, unthanked.
Or pass between you glacial wisdom,
slow-footed news;
At leafy caravanaries you trade among your gradual people, from gardens strayed;
to them reveal your gospel, them, in conch-like pews.
You are tucked, your puckered foot is bare.
I pluck you from my palm and you unfurl your body;
prongs are, like the point, in air, a question mark, your shell the inward-questing curl.
Why trust your tender self to me,
one bred in a speed-mad world from which all wisdom's fled?

I found you on Google

I'm not sure whether I want to post this one or not. I've set the deadline ahead, so I have time to think about it.

I found you on Google

I found you on Google, like any good romance;
from the Midwest you fascinate with your joint selves,
attract attention with votre limbs, life, everything,
twin infatuations and more than pretty book-ends.
The ribald mass speculates whether your seperate hearts
require seperate lovers, whether you'd both moan for one,
whether adultery comes with second heads. I'll serve
you as two mistresses, for I'd have you both uniquely.
I cannot know you so I imagine I share myself
with a doppelganger, make-believe the diplomacy
of one pair of legs and two directions; I fail.
Between your collarbones is the symbol of sibling rivalry
resolved, and I send you my anonymous love
and hope that you can find it in yourselves to share.

This has generally garnered praise from those who've read it--including the professor mentioned in the previous sonnet post. I, however, am slightly uncomfortable publishing it because it's a love sonnet (and something of an erotic sonnet) written to real people who I don't know. If I put it on the Internet, I 1) might look like a creep/loser and 2) might embarass said real people, who would recognise themselves, I'm sure.

There is a story behind this. It's a companion to "Everyone deserves fourteen lines." I had thought about that poem, and decided an interesting next poem would be written to two people instead of to no one. I had also been thinking about writing a poem about the subjects, and these two ideas merged into one. Since it's a sonnet, I just automatically wrote it as infatuatous (I don't think that's a word). So I don't actually want a relationship with them; it's the form. Lots of people do think/speak the sentiments I'm expressing, though, based on the sort of on-line discussions I've seen. Despite all that, I would like to meet them. (And, yes, they are kind of cute, though a little young for me.)

And they are conjoined twins, if you haven't gathered that yet.

So that's the story behind this. Yikes, it's long, and I've said that I hate disclaimers.

Everyone deserves fourteen lines

Same as the previous two poems; for a class, open poetry assignment. I'll write the backstory afterwards.

Everyone deserves fourteen lines

Everyone deserves fourtheen lines at least once,
but I reserve iambs for people I know.
I'd blazon you; luxuriate your lips' sheen,
your straight or curling hair, as if I knew.
Maybe we'll soon meet; maybe we already have
on the bus somewhere or across a counter,
as our hands brush with the movement of coins,
a clumsy oracle to a future consummation.
My fingers wander across the keys, looking
for your eyes in the aisle seat, your scent at the till
where you might wait for me and I for you,
but if we keep waiting our hands won't brush again.
I write you bottled sonnets and set them free
and maybe one day you'll send a map to our couplet.

As evident here and here, I sometimes take it upon myself to write sonnets for people I know, for kicks. Largely, the idea is to try writing a sonnet and see how well it goes. I like practicing word play. Anyway, I had to events approaching fairly simultaneously at the end of January/beginning of February this past year: an open poetry assignment and a blind date. So this sonnet started out as a sonnet to the date, who I wouldn't have known. However, the date fell through, so I addressed it instead to not just a complete stranger, but to someone I'd never met at all (or, maybe had).

The last three lines are not right. The professor for the course pointed that out for me (I hadn't noticed before): "These last three lines don't maintain the strength of the previous lines. The language is less complex, more conversational, and it breaks the tone." She is absolutely correct, and I will endeavour to fix that in time.

Finally, if you know anything about sonnets--esp. those by major Renaissance poets--I encourage you to look for references and allusions. But, then, if you know anything about sonnets--esp. those by major Renaissance poets--you already have.

Journal #4: Metaphysical Poets and the Chimæras of Perspective

The Lives of Amphibians and Chimæras:

Journal #4

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Metaphysical Poets and the Chimæras of Perspective

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Samuel Johnson, in his section on Cowley in Lives of the English Poets, characterizes metaphysical conceits as "the most heterogeneous ideas ... yoked by violence together," and he means it to be derogatory. Even though I have expressed an interest in mixed wit, concerning the comparison of both sound and sense, I must join T. S. Eliot in defending Donne and the other metaphysicals; the metaphysical conceit has given me great pleasure in the past and I think it is unworthy of this derision.

To my mind, the metaphysical conceit operates as a metaphor or analogy: the speaker uses an easily understood idea to illustrate the idea the speaker wants the audience to understand. The primary difference between a metaphysical conceit and a simile is that, in the conceit, the two parts are not 'like' or 'as' each other--or, at least, not on the surface. It requires a certain intellectual effort to understand the connection. This, perhaps, is what Johnson dislikes: that the effect is unnatural, not automatic, and difficult.

I would argue that hard work reaps better rewards. Not only is the reader flushed with the satisfaction of having solved some wrinkle in 'Elegy 19'--which may be reward in itself--but the reader is given new perspective. For instance, Donne dances on the edge of heresy in Holy Sonnet 18; he likens the church to an adulterous wife and says the most adulterous church is best. A simpler metaphor would be saying that a church is like a [holy] host: the more open to guests, the better. But this will tell us nothing new; only when he changes the understanding of 'open', and plays with the idea of the Church being Christ's bride do we get this new perspective. The idea of ownership of conquest of a woman is challenged in this sonnet--if a woman is like a church, then she cannot be owned by any one person, or, for that matter, any person at all. Thus the metaphysical conceit, in its complexity, forces the puzzler to re-examine those relationships hitherto assumed to be 'simple.'

The heterogeneous nature of the ideas give yet another advantage, and that is fascination. The Greeks had a monster called a Chimæra[1] which operated on the same principle: a lion, a goat, and a dragon were all bundled violently and uncooperatively into a single beast. The Greeks had many similar creatures--centuars, harpies, sphinxes--and the Egyptians worshipped others--Anubis, Horus, Hathor. These beings are powerful because they are memorable, and they are memorable because they are unnatural and shocking: we cannot tear them from our mind. The metaphysical conceit is similar. The very unnatural, at times heretical, union of ideas fascinates us, and we find that we are unwilling to let go until we have figured out exactly how they work. Thus, I remember Donne's poetry and forget Johnson's. The metaphysical conceit provides both a changed perspective and a fascination that gives it more power than a simile.

______________

[1] I use the 'æ' intentionally to emphasize the conjoining of disparate elements. This is less 'sense' and more 'sound' (or sight): I could also say that it is an æsthetic decision, but that would just be silly.

A Sampling of John Donne

In my humble opinion, John Donne is pretty awesome. Here are some cases in point:

Elegy 19. To His Mistress Going to Bed

Come, Madam, come, all rest my powers defy,
Until I labor, I in labor lie.
The foe ofttimes having the foe in sight,
Is tired with standing though he never fight.
Off with that girdle, like heaven's zone glistering,
But a far fairer world encompassing.
Unpin that spangled breastplate which you wear
That th' eyes of busy fools may be stopped there.
Unlace yourself, for that harmonious chime
Tells me from you that now it is bed-time.
Off with that happy busk, which I envy,
That still can be and still can stand so nigh.
Your gown going off, such beauteous state reveals
As when from flowery meads the' hill's shadow steals.
Off with that wiry coronet and show
The hairy diadem which on you doth grow;
Now off with those shoes, and then safely tread
In this love's hallowed temple, this soft bed.
In such white robes, heaven's angels used to be
Received by men; thou, angel, bring'st with thee
A heaven like Mahomet's paradise; and though
Ill spirits walk in white, we easily know
By this these angels from an evil sprite,
Those set our hairs, but these our flesh upright.
License my roving hands, and let them go
Before, behind, between, above, below.
O my America! my new-found-land,
My kingdom, safeliest when with one man manned,
My mine of precious stones, my empery,
How blest am I in this discovering thee!
To enter in these bonds is to be free;
There where my hand is set, my seal shall be.
Full nakedness! All joys are due to thee.
As souls unbodied, bodies clothed must be,
To taste whole joys. Gems which you women use
Are like Atlanta's balls, cast in men's views,
That when a fool's eye lighteth on a gem,
His earthly soul may covet theirs, not them.
Like pictures, or like books' gay coverings, made
For laymen, are all women thus arrayed;
Themselves are mystic books, which only we
(Whom their imputed grace will dignify)
Must see revealed. Then since that I may know,
As liberally as to a midwife show
Thyself: cast all, yea, this white linen hence,
Here is no penance, much less innocence.
To teach thee, I am naked first, why then
What need'st thou have more covering than a man?

And then his Holy Sonnets

14

Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurped town, to another due,
Labor to admit you, but O, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
but is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be fain,
But am betrothed unto your enemy.
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again;
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.


18

Show me, dear Christ, thy spouse so bright and clear.
What! is it she which on the other shore
Goes richly painted? or which, robbed and tore,
Laments and mourns in Germany and here?
Sleeps she a thousand, then peeps up one year?
Is she self-truth, and errs? now new, now outwore?
Doth she, and did she, and shall she evermore
On one, on seven, or on no hill appear?
Dwells she with us, or like adventuring knights
First travel we to seek, and then make love?
Betray, kind husband, thy spouse to our sights,
And let mine amorous soul court thy mild dove,
Who is most true and pleasing to thee then
When she is embraced and open to most men.

To help interpretation, Christ's spouse is understood to be the church . . . the more people welcome in the church, the better it is . . . so this is an interesting working of the idea that the more men Christ's wife is "open" to--read that with a dirty mind--the more he loves her.

Sonnet 2 - Saima

Saima, I with patience write this verse
Near the time that we will move away,
To try to tell how you improved the worse
Parts of tasks, events, the dragging day.
Standing by the microwave at noon,
You would tease my eye by showing shoes,
Make my tongue with sweet desserts to swoon,
And fake our romance, others to confuse.
I will miss our summer bonding weeks,
Tattooed thistle etch'd on shoulder brown,
Secret notes in bunks, your laughing cheeks,
And talks while driving home across the town.
So when I freeze in Kingston's winter cold
I will Saima's warm remembrance hold.

See other sonnet for explanation.

Sonnet 1 - Kristy

Your absence, darling Kristy, rents my heart;
When you with inner eye I try to see,
In your missing space goes every part
That made that organ you had torn from me.
Morning opens clouded o'er in pain:
I seek your smiling face, my fleecy lamb,
Your laughter's lifting Nova Scotian strain,
And find the park a Kristy-lacking sham.
I know that you will still return some day
To flash your shutter, sealing moments rare
On film and heart with all-enchanting ray,
To whisper his, and here your beauty share,
Yet after peachy times, you leave
This park alone, and lonely me bereaved.

I dislike disclaimers, but know nonetheless that this is supposed to be ridiculous, and is laden with inside jokes. I wouldn't use 'peachy' if it didn't mean something else.