gmf@uvacs.UUCP (04/09/84)
Are there any people on the net besides me who are addicted to sonnets?
Here's one by John Ciardi (published by him in 1979):
For Instance
A boy came up the street and there was a girl.
"Hello," they said in passing, then didn't pass.
They began to imagine. They imagined all night
and woke imagining what the other imagined.
Later they woke with no need to imagine.
They were together. They kept waking together.
Once they woke a daughter who got up
and went looking for something without looking back.
But they had one another. Then one of them died.
It makes no difference which. Either. The other
tried to imagine dying, and couldn't really,
but died later, maybe to find out,
though probably not. Not everything that happens
is a learning experience. Maybe nothing is.
-- John Ciardi
Admittedly gloomy. Here's a more traditional one (rhymed, strict
iambic pentameter), not so gloomy, which I wrote about 3 years ago:
when we were young
remember love when we were young and where
insistent to each other we would be
incorporate in gritty ecstasy
on fields of moon and we were lovelike there
and inside when we lay we could outwear
the night and listen to the strategy
of banging freight cars being joined while we
set voyages of which we weren't aware
no greater mystery excepting death
will penetrate our days and make fulfill
the monuments of flesh in which we care
until the day we break our beating breath
and time must discontain us waiting still
remember love when we were young and where
Gordon Fisher (...!uvacs!gmf)