sw00039usabys-15.apr.sonnets.8of25

8 of 25                                               

 1976 Today
                353 bicentennial year sonnets (107-121)

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April: Year-day 107

Aftermath: warm weather still; a Good Friday
too good to believe, seventy-six and
climbing/ with just a light haze for this high day
this morning to indicate the hour hand
on reaching three will catch us watching rain
again, will catch us on our silent knees
asking false forgiveness for all the pain
we've caused and cause/ between our/ rosaries.

Golgotha, ground of our spirits, the thief
of jeers; the thief of blessings, let the sun
shine, despoil our looked-for symbol of grief,
our Linus cloth, the vacuous relief
we get/ thinking a sign that says we've won
has been given us, who founder, undone.

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April: Year-day 108

Holy Saturday; I finally finished
John Ashbery's "The New Spirit", poet
of self-imposed isolation, diminished
desires, that I am, knowing how to blow it,
yet not even doing that very well,
writing a meagre sonnet a day, half-
expecting to be killed soon, marked for hell,
forever unable/ to rise, to laugh.

"The System"?  "The Recital"?  I don't know
when I'll get around to reading them.  Death
would certainly cut my chance.  From the dark
I now am in I would just have to go
to that dark as I am, without that breath
of Ashbery air to give me more spark.

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April: Year-day 109

Easter dawn, light strawberry sherbet striped,
I sit here at my parents' dining table,
remembering a child's stained fingers, his hyped
nerves, and hearing geese I have not been able
to see, the folded linen, the rolled stone
returning and returning, as the dawn
smoothes to lemon-orange, and the long known
flame-behind-trunk, egg, forces to the lawn.

Will be going to church this morning, sad
though I am about it because I've got
to complain there to my rife Rune God, grim
through His followers toward those who have had
hours/ unblessed ways.  Ought a condemned man not
join/ in Communion with those/ against him?

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April: Year-day 110

In my left forearm an off-and-on ache
disgruntles me, makes me look to my heart,
wondering whether for anyone's sake
I'm wise to expose my feelings and art
as I do, showing isolation's flesh
and bones where they're lodged in me; howthey claim
my attention, depriving us of fresh
outlooks, so that we wish/ I had no name.

Yet Gail and Noreen made an Easter basket
for me: a pack of Trident bubblegum,
a Nestle's Animal Bar, and who'd guess--
an egg with my face.  I would never ask it
of them, any of it; but let it come.
A body can't take too much  loneliness.

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April: Year-day 111

Emerson, man, your courage, verve astound!
Such body your thought has, such power, I'm
convinced its rising in you/ many times
rose you/ gesturing, eyes intense, the sound
of your voice stopping the books in your den
just as now my reading your "Self-Reliance"
moves me to quote to my wife; my defiance
to lift me "upright and vital", this pen
in my right hand, this red pen, chasing yours,
pressing signs on this waiting looseleaf sheet
so that it too rises (verdured with strength
enough to embarrass the Supreme Court
and the President and Congress)/ & speaks
flowers/fruits that excite lives all their length.

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April: Year-day 112

To rhyme is to punch the eyes of an owl;
to attempt to mend days with threads of wind
is to think you have found a rhythm.  Scowl,
look nonplussed, titter.  I don't care.  I've pinned
them anyhow, the truths of these delights,
these pains.  To rhyme is to bite moons in trees;
to make a rhythm is to stanza nights
with the punctual passing of scared knees.

So the leaves fall on all the shores of Earth,
and the blood beats through arteries and veins;
and doors close and doors open and hills climb;
and whoosing, crackling fires affirm rebirth;
and the ashes of summer build new gains;
and the Black Angel greens with fame and time.

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April: Year-day 113

Time crumbles like sand drying in a palm
when memory makes presents of our pasts
and unexpected turbulences cast
terror and confusion into our calms;
but so it is, for neither you nor I,
however we build cities in the sand,
can long build anything which strongly stands
against winds and suns beating rainless skies.

So new gives way to new gives way to new,
and known gives way to known gives way to known,
and always we are infants coming through,
and always we are ragged to the bone;
and if we must dig well to see what's true,
we must, with understanding, build alone.

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April: Year-day 114

O yes, "It is we who wither away,
not the state", Randall; & yet we who grow
strong and jouncy also.  Imay not know
enough to choose well the course of my day
but that won't stop me from trying.  Let's say
our say then, vocally or as we flow
otherwise, despite the angers that blow
from us, the frustrations, regrets; so pray

as caringly as we can, thankful for
each moment we pass through, allowed to fill
and be filled by: surgeon, patient, nurse; teacher,
student; decadent; fireman, victim, store
detective, policeman, guard; driver; mill/
mine/foundry worker: each a/ mystic creature.

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April: Year-day 115

And so, when Chris Peters came to me smiling
with excitement because she'd seen and heard
Gwendolyn Brooks, my envy started isling
me, and I acted toward her like a turd,
happy for her, but stinky with complaints,
irked at feeling a garbage island, cast
from thought, my own included, the brown taints
of hurt pride excluding me to the last.

However, this same morning, more than I
am worthy of, to be sure, I've been blessed
with the duty of checking Mrs. Brooks
out of this inn I audit for; so try
to work and still chat, get good things expressed.
My feelings pirouette behind my looks.

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April: Year-day 116

If we kill each other, do the crows care?
The male robins puff their proud orange breasts
and trill their pleasant mating songs.  Who shares?
The spring birds mated/ weave their/ holy nests.
If this rich nation fights with that for more/
befriended so positioned to be raped,
its psyche shaken . . . even if its power
breaks its attacker's holds, neither's escaped.

Though Rune forgives; though Rune alone can judge,
knowing the best the circumstances and/
the ways they've tangled, each (stuck in a hell)
still has himself to fight with: forgive, nudge--
however painfully--toward health; demand
some sort of restitution from; love well.

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April: Year-day 117

April: turn; turn about: yet sweet; yet cruel:
the hornets of mad weathers sting and sting,
the daffodils of gentle light blow cool,
the naked dancer wriggles off his ring.

Inceptions chocked with death designs stretch forth.
We meet ourselves/ remembering passed years.
Our dreams from east and south and west and north,
however deep with smiles, are deep with sneers.

Your hand, now touching mine, now by itself,
has fortunes in it only you will know,
as dills and honey waiting in their jars,
each one yours, each; each on its given shelf;
and I will rest and work and watch and grow--
within, without--toward fruits and hearts and stars.

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April: Year-day 118

What sorrows come upon me with the dawn,
the brightness of its airs chiding my death;
what spiteswhen I for safety view the lawn
and a red pepper Stingray stops my breath!

Oh, hu, hu!  Can you believe?  What spins?  Please,
I should be singing glories at my wake,
be sharp and teasing asa lakeshore breeze,
not a dumpy toad/ for-- for humans' sake.

Everything in its rightful place: the world
given, the world we make: towers of steel,
towers of glass; mountains, sequoias, skies.

Everything in its fitting dance: spots curled
in an afternoon sleep; hood crest, mag wheel,
eagle, CB; incense, songs, cuddling eyes.

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April: Year-day 119

Conditioned reflex.  A sonnet should rhyme;
but not too definitely, so we're able
to guess the word each line will end with.  I'm
serious!  My words are/ all on the table.

I will give one here, take another back,
keep trying/ to shake my opponents, even
if it is an imaginary stack
I'm using.  Don't tell me what I should leave in.

I am only trying to do my thing;
more, honor the charge to play life whole;
I won't always seek to trick when I sing,
slip you a seven you think is a king.
Let's not argue about body and soul.
Care about So Human an Animal.

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April: Year-day 120

O--give the world away.  We'll buy it back
tomorrow.  We haven't been using it
very well, anyhow.  From our sweet lack
of understanding--it needs a rest.  Sit.
Maybe if for ten thousand years we let
it whirl on its own, it will improve some,
enough at least so we can rightly set
our creations on it; be wise.  But, come,

I want you to see something.  This rare Earth,
blue, white, brown, grandly spinning in the light
of its star, has only limited worth
without us, even if we are fools, quite
obviously, too often sure the birth
of wisdom in us/ wields/ sufficient might.

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April: Year-day 121

Lord, when the death frame's near, beam that belief
I'll need to/ enter Glory, be that child
You said each must.  But what of now? the leaf
turning.  I seldom live as though--.  Tossed, filed,
I Am Who Am, yet/ pleased to be/ alive,
move me, alive, to please, who so hard fails,
who tortures himself: inside, outside; thrives
not/ well; despite intentions, thrashes, wails.

Peripatetic philosopher, Son
of Man, my Brother, my spirit's one hope,
I swear I'm so ridiculous: cocked dung,
strutter of worded attitudes all spun
from love, sincerity, but forming tropes
more praised than acted on.  Make virtues tongue.
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8 of 25


Brian A. J. Salchert