The Poetry Porch presents

the sonnet scroll xiii

AN EVENING IN EARLY SPRING
By Georg Heym, trans. by William Ruleman

Some kids stole the crutches of the old sad sack
At the lamppost there with his cursing whine.
One’s look is lured to the large red sign
That traces him, rampant, from neck to back.

For hours, at the new house on the block,
A man’s been hammering steel to bits.
On the bridge feeding swans, a couple sits,
Collecting around them their little flock.

Now the sunset burns the woodland’s hem
With a gold light that starts to disappear
As clouds, in pairs, snuff out its light.

Yet in rosy blue, the glittering gem
Of the evening star—pure, lonely, and clear—
Still shines—burns too brightly: Rain tonight.

ABEND IN VORFRÜHLING
By Georg Heym

Dem Bettler stahlen Kinder seine Krücken.
Nun sitzt er schimpfend am Laternenpfahl.
Den Blick lockt an ein großes rotes Mal,
Das wuchernd zieht vom Halse zu dem Rücken.

Am Neubau hämmert in den harten Stahl
Ein Mann seit Stunden, daß er birst zu Stücken.
Ein Pärchen füttert Schwäne von den Brücken,
Um sich versammelnd ihre kleine Zahl.

Im Uferwalde brennt in gelbem Schein
Der Abendhimmel. Wolken ziehn zu paar
Darüber hin. Ihm wird der Glanz genommen.

Doch glänzt im ros’gen Blau der Edelstein
Des Abendsternes, einsam, rein und klar.
Es brennt zu hell. Zu Nacht wird Regen kommen.

SONNET OF THE SOUL
By Georg Heym, trans. by William Ruleman

(Hugo von Hofmannsthal)

A thousand creatures’ pulsing will
Rages inside us like racing horses;
Veins’ vines seethe; wildfire courses
Throughout us and lures us to hurt and kill.

Battle-tested bestial forces,
Well-selected manly skill
Suit our hell. And so we spill
Our legacy of Earth’s resources.

Yet listening to our souls, we hear
Ice start to clink, and water stir,
And then strange currents, loud and clear,

And then a wingbeat’s quiet whirr. . .
And we feel at one, alone
With earthly powers we had not known.

SONETT DER SEELE
By Georg Heym

Willensdrang von tausend Wesen
Wogt in uns vereint, verklärt:
Feuer loht und Rebe gärt
Und sie locken uns zum Bösen.

Tiergewalten, kampfbewährt,
Herrengaben, auserlesen,
Eignen uns und wir verwesen
Einer Welt ererbten Wert.

Wenn wir unsrer Seele lauschen,
Hören wir’s wie Eisen klirren,
Rätselhafte Quellen rauschen,

Stille Vögelflüge schwirren . . .
Und wir fühlen uns verwandt
Weltenkräften unerkannt.

A SPENSERIAN SONNET FOR EARLY SPRING
By William Ruleman

“Nothing gold can stay.”
—Robert Frost

As if some child had dipped them in Easter-egg dye,
Myriad maple leaflets are sprouting today,
Chartreuse before a livid lavender sky.
Flighty as fireflies aglow on evenings in May,
They make me neglect that naught chartreuse can stay,
Spellbound as I am yet again by these sprigs that sing,
These green lights that urge me to go shun work for play,
These lime tears stinging my ears and making them ring.
Chartreuse, the liqueur these limpid leaflets fling;
Chartreuse, the grape-shreds fleeing those ash-gray spokes
(Skinny skeletal winter’s claws that cling
To spring’s champagne spewed forth, the stuff of jokes);
Chartreuse . . . Is nature’s gaudiest green fool’s gold?
Can a hue this haughty ever grow old?

Blizzard
By Denise Provost

It looks as though the snow has ceased to fall.
I hear the shovel’s scrape, then the dull growl
of small snow-blowers, followed by the plow
that shifts the snowfall higher on the tall
banks that enclose us. What we see is all
distorted; once familiar sights effaced,
street grid and landmarks gradually encased
in deepening piles and drifts, into which small
children venture at their peril. I walk
into a world of surrealistic shapes.
The sun is out, people have come to gawk
at how one storm has altered the landscape
and placed on ordinary life a lock
that we, so outmatched, struggle to escape.

Copyright © 2013 by Denise Provost

Belief in Things Unseen
By Denise Provost

The most amazing thing happened today—
I managed to thread a needle, the eye
of which I couldn’t see at all. You say
it’s not remarkable, but you should try
inserting a thin piece of cotton skein
into an aperture essentially
invisible. Why even undertake
a task that’s so unlikely to succeed?

It is pure faith, which age cannot abate,
that makes it possible for me to find
an opening my eyes cannot locate,
on just my second try. For, in my mind,
I’m certain that a needle will admit
a thread, if not a camel, into it.

Copyright © 2013 by Denise Provost

Illusions
By Denise Provost

“Florida Fruit” was the name of the shop
where I took my little daughter, and bought
her there her very first fresh fig. I watched
as she bit into it. Her eyes grew big,
as she exclaimed, “It’s filled with jam!” That fig
brought revelation, misperceived or not.

I could not allow my child to believe
that jam-filled pastries simply grew on trees;
so I explained the splendid botany
of a soft fruit, even softer inside,
produced on tender plants. I also tried
to describe lands by far-off, milder seas,
conducive to such growth; because, you know,
Florida is not where the fig trees grow.

Copyright © 2013 by Denise Provost

LIZARD LIGHT
by Gene Twaronite

All that remained
was a wisp
of bones—

beads of vertebrae
arching the spine
behind its skull.

Baring tiny teeth,
it gapes with empty
sockets at the sun

shining through the
windows of its
ivory chapel.

SONNET TO WELDON KEES
By James Naiden

(1914-1955?)

No one knows what happened to you, just
That you were gone, vanished, your Plymouth
Left near the Golden Gate Bridge, and no fuss,
No death note, except talk about going south
To Mexico, like Ambrose Bierce some years
Earlier; he too was not found alive
Or dead; older than you, worn with fears
For nearly seven decades, to arrive
At a bitter place; like you, he came to see
The world was a hard shell, always rough.
One may read James Reidel’s biography,
Marvel at your steep terrain, which was tough.
There is no going back to relive the past.
Your poems are tall as a Viking mast.

Postcard on the first day of spring
By Kelley Jean White

—for Christopher Bursk

There was a star in the center of your
book. Just where the binding split from so much
re-reading. I’d put a cardinal feather
there to mark my place. I can’t tell whether
it grew into wings when it tasted such
wisdom, or flew off on the wind, a blur
of laughter at your bitter comic truths—
laughter, with, not at, a sad boy naked—
no, not a sad boy, a triumphant boy—
a boy who teaches, loves each of us, gives,
gives, coaxes each little flame ’til it lives
by itself its own spinning whistling joy
wrapped in your words, which you give, and we take.
One little starspark left. And the feather.
You gave it to me. Yes, that forever.

DEMOTED PLANET
By B. E. Stock

Poor little planet, what have you done?
Are you too small around to deserve the degree?
Did they find you don’t really orbit the sun?
Is your center not fire but celestial scree?
What have you done to be cast into doubt—
Have you gotten too tired to capture a moon?
Did your mountains grow inward rather than out?
Are you wrapped in a mane and not a cocoon?

I know you are there in the velvety sky
Just as you were before I was born
And though I can’t see you with unaided eye
It wouldn’t be right to leave you forlorn.
So what if you’re different? Why should I explain it?
For me you remain, as you have been, a planet.

Real-Sock Sonnet
By Ron Singer

My daughter just bought a new pair of socks,
twenty-four percent polyester
with a touch of spandex (twelve percent)
thrown in, for good wear (and measure).
The rest, sixty-four percent, is cotton.
“Organic polyester,” she joked.
Well, some polyesters are organic
(petroleum-based), but others are not.

Since the label wasn’t more specific,
assuming inorganic polyester,
her socks are still about two-thirds real,
which, these days, I suppose, is not bad for hose.
Given the iron laws of Economics,
let’s say these socks are as real as it gets.

Julia in the Bois de Boulogne, 1858
By K. E. Duffin

Sitting in leaf litter, your back against a tree,
white hair and dark coat unmistakably yours,
three quarters of a long century
before your birth, waiting for Flora, or already Flora’s—

are you sending me a posthumous message?
Perhaps you were always here, in Marville’s photograph,
(Marville!) even as you walked the map of Rome, adding page
after page to your life’s work, your epitaph.

Surrounded by a sea of fallen leaves,
homunculus subsiding into the Latinate embrace
of autumn like a figure in a Chinese painting who grieves
the passing of every season—time and space

are your compass now. In antique sun and shade,
is it life or mortality that you evade?

Elm
By K. E. Duffin

Elephant’s foot poured into earth,
sluggish syrup of bark with sensuous folds,
taproot sunk many cellars below, so old
the sidewalk quakes at the rebirth

of giants, who erupt . . . but only this one
in a landscape of smaller strivers
has taken hold, feeling for the sun,
pushing the sky, espier of rivers.

What roamed beneath, curled up or prayed
in its shade before our cities were made?
How many winter stars roosted in its crown?

Now leaves stay green until they drift down—
Tenacious to live, it must economize:
no interim gold, no showy mock goodbyes.

Catherine nue assise sur une peau de panthère
by Moira Egan

(after the painting by Suzanne Valadon, 1923)

Catherine relaxes on the panther skin
that’s draped across a chair as in someone’s den.
She’s off in thought, or maybe on the brink
of boredom, ready to return to posing,
bemusing resignation in her eyes.
Her breasts point downward; clearly gravity
is not a stranger, and her abdomen
protrudes, a friendly paunch. Here is a woman
who probably enjoys her cheese and wine,
and why not? She works hard—look at those thighs,
their massive strength, and yet the lovely feet—
aristocratic promise gone unseen
by anyone she passes in the street.
To them she’s just the charwoman, Catherine.

La femme aux bas blancs
by Moira Egan

(after the painting by Suzanne Valadon, 1924)

If he had painted her, I fear she’d be
a succubus—not succulent and rare,
plopped solid, rightful on the Empire chair,
hands comfortably clasped, propping the right knee
up across the left leg, letting us see
a swath of healthy thigh, skin smooth and fair,
between white stockings and lace-edged underwear
that peeks out from beneath the red chemise.

And though she doesn’t seem to have the time
to kick off her shoes (vermilion Louis heels),
her make-up’s still intact, the contoured eyes
and carmine lips emphatically defined
by a practiced hand. She won’t say what she feels
about the abandoned, hopeful rose bouquet.

Sonnet on the Occasion of His __th Birthday
by Moira Egan

It’s true that those of us who come into
the world in summer understand the heat.
And, certainly, it’s up there in degrees,
whatever we call this thing between us two.
I heard your voice’s warmth last night when you
telephoned just to say that you missed me.
I pictured you, shirtless and no A/C,
alone and sleepless. (Yes, I miss you too.)

Your Centigrade, my Fahrenheit, this world’s
a place where love’s a scorched earth policy
and global warming’s real, not fantasy.
Who knows what’s next, but this heat, oddly pure,
that glows between us sometimes makes me cry
the way you did when we first said good-bye.

In the Villa Sciarra Garden
by Moira Egan

(after Richard Wilbur, Henri Cole, and a bout of the blues)

I plop down on the cool white marble seat
before the fountain. I’ve come here to lose
this case of expat-melancholy-blues
by listening to the genius loci
that babbles down around the family
of sweetly shaggy fauns and their pet goose
cavorting to the faun-son’s conch-shell music.
The pool is full today, laced through with leaves
and fall debris, one Fanta can afloat.
The polizia horses come to drink,
then snort, and whinny happily, and stamp
impatient hooves. Time too for me to go:
I stand and stretch the cold away, and think
how Caravaggio’d love to paint their rumps.

THE DEAD OF SPRING
by Donald Sheehy

And they did eat, and were all filled. —Luke 9:17

In early spring the shore of the bay
is littered with fresh heaps of fish kill:
gizzard-shad mostly, of various size,
here and there the distinct tint of bluegill.
Every March they come in with the thaw,
rising up dead as the ice dissolves,
riding the rise of melt water ashore.
Some, badly battered, are crusted in sand;
others lay gleaming on rocks gently washed.
Except for those the crows have plucked,
each limpid, round, and lidless eye
turns heavenward uncomprehending,
as though by reproach, if mute and mild,
a world such as this might be mended.

Die offs are unexceptional here.
All spring and summer carcasses
bloat and rot on the narrow sands
or float in shallows clotted with grass.
But this time is different somehow.
Death has never despoiled so many,
and as their numbers multiply—
by tens and by hundreds of thousands—
I think of hungers unsatisfied,
of bodies famished, souls starved for faith,
in the cruel abundance of waste.
No miracles wait for the pious or poor
along this malodorous shore.
Still, I look at the sky and ask why.

Presque Isle, Pennsylvania 2013

Copyright © 2013 by Donald Sheehy

AND SIGNS SHALL FOLLOW
by Donald Sheehy

And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they
cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall
take up serpents. —Mark 16:17-18

Like snakes that writhe in a shallow hollow
my thoughts turn in on themselves and swallow;
my heart recoils in dark turmoil.
Once I believed that faith and science,
like twin prongs forked from a single stick,
could—when wielded with patience and grace—
still sort and sift, still pin and lift
out from the shifting, seething mass
a single serpent, charmed and stilled,
and held for mind to contemplate
through brille and scale, through awe and dread,
the fusion of venom and beauty.
Now all thought is a poisonous snarl.
I would shed more than skin to be free.

I LOOKED, AND BEHOLD
by Donald Sheehy

And I looked, and behold, a pale horse & his name that sate
on him was Death. —Revelation 6:8

If I tell you that three pale horses
galloped across a field of fresh snow,
each breath a cloud of vapor rising
each hoof fall a bursting cloud below—
If I sound out their muffled thunder
until the air all around you quakes,
or spin a whirlwind of swirling frost
to scatter light through crystalline flakes—
If I summon forth those pale horses,
unbridled, stride by unbroken stride,
the outstretched necks, wide eyes, flared nostrils,
the supple shoulders, the heaving sides—
Then could you say why, with no warning,
I was undone by grief and longing?

IN WHITE
by Donald Sheehy

After Frost

A snowy owl in a pasture of snow
on a frigid and blustery day
concealed itself in stillness and white
and I watched as it waited for prey.
I could with a shiver of dark delight
and a clear metaphysical conscience
claim the unfortunate mouse was white
but it wasn’t and truth should suffice.
I think it was a white-footed mouse
but it might well have been a vole;
the snow was fiercely swirling about
and I was too far to be certain.
Whichever it was it bled a bright red
and the eyes of the owl glowed like gold.

A FURTHER REFLECTION
by Donald Sheehy

For Donna

The pond is as still as the sky it reflects
until the tip of a tree swallow’s wing
dips down too near the transparent surface
and stirs up a spiral of concentric rings.
We have no word for a touch so ethereal,
no name for the margin of water and air,
and even when whispered the plosives of ripple
would amplify falsely the wave motion there.
Nonetheless in reflection the world is altered
as unsettled suns slide forward and back;
the sturdy straight trees grow pliant and waver,
while whole wide horizons expand and contract.
My mind, if you will, is that mutable water,
and the wing of the swallow a stray thought of you.

Sonnets for Sunflowers
by Joyce Wilson

May sonnets I create today vibrate
And methods I employ be multiple
Like these self-seeded favorites of Van Gogh
Who stand together, many eight feet tall.

May several lines exact their bright appeal
As blossoms do in hues of gold and yellow,
Whose crenellated crowns of petal silk
Surround a fertile darkness at the center.

May stanzas open branches up to let
The songbirds come and feast among the leaves,
Upright or hanging upside down, to rip
And scatter hope by sowing next year’s seeds.

Before the blossoms shrink and lose their color,
May these few words record my love of summer.

The Poetry Porch presents

the sonnet scroll xiii

AN EVENING IN EARLY SPRING By Georg Heym, trans. by William Ruleman

ABEND IN VORFRÜHLING By Georg Heym

SONNET OF THE SOUL By Georg Heym, trans. by William Ruleman

SONETT DER SEELE By Georg Heym

A SPENSERIAN SONNET FOR EARLY SPRING By William Ruleman

Blizzard By Denise Provost

Belief in Things Unseen By Denise Provost

Illusions By Denise Provost

LIZARD LIGHT by Gene Twaronite

SONNET TO WELDON KEES By James Naiden

Postcard on the first day of spring By Kelley Jean White

DEMOTED PLANET By B. E. Stock

Real-Sock Sonnet By Ron Singer

Julia in the Bois de Boulogne, 1858 By K. E. Duffin

Elm By K. E. Duffin

Catherine nue assise sur une peau de panthère by Moira Egan

La femme aux bas blancs by Moira Egan

Sonnet on the Occasion of His __th Birthday by Moira Egan

In the Villa Sciarra Garden by Moira Egan

THE DEAD OF SPRING by Donald Sheehy

AND SIGNS SHALL FOLLOW by Donald Sheehy

I LOOKED, AND BEHOLD by Donald Sheehy

IN WHITE by Donald Sheehy

A FURTHER REFLECTION by Donald Sheehy

Sonnets for Sunflowers by Joyce Wilson