A Sentimental Sonnet

This sonnet is about as overtly sentimental as I get. It was originally the closing sonnet to the "sonnet of sonnets" in my collection The Distant Belovèd, but I pulled it in favor of a much better one. Still, I'm not ashamed of this sonnet's sentimentality, nor its honesty. Though I would never send it out to editors (I know very well it isn't publishable), I have no qualms about posting it on this blog.

IN LOVING YOU

Such bounty you have given unaware!
In loving you, I learned to see the earth
With clearer, more discerning eyes; to dare
Explore anew the mind's unbounded worth.

You gave my spirit strength to gain new height,
And strive for what is noblest, what is best;
Belief in what exists beyond this sight,
Beyond this life and earth's most lofty crest.

You gave my soul voracity for Truth;
In loving you, I saw what I had not,
Then came to know at last what I had sought,
And found again the Father of my youth.

My heart is hungry for the God that gave me you;
In loving you, I found the Love that is most true.


© Leticia Austria 2008

From My Big Orange Book: Siegfried Sassoon

It has been quite a while since I posted something from My Big Orange Book, so let me once again explain what My Big Orange Book is. Years ago when I lived in Houston, I bought a big orange blank book at Borders. It was on sale for five dollars, so naturally I had to have it. But it was far too large and heavy to use as a journal, at least in the way I journal, which is to tote the journal around with me and write in cafes and restaurants. So I decided to use the big orange blank book to copy any poems, quotations, or song lyrics that moved me.

 

Today, I'd like to share a sonnet by Siegfried Sassoon titled "Strangeness of Heart."

When I have lost the power to feel the pang
Which first I felt in childhood when I woke
And heard the unheeding garden bird who sang
Strangeness of heart for me while morning broke;
Or when in latening twilight sure with spring,
Pausing on homeward paths along the wood,
No sadness thrills my thought while thrushes sing,
And I'm no more the listening child who stood
So many sunsets past and could not say
What wandering voices called from far away:
When I have lost those simple spells that stirred
My being with an untranslated song,
Let me go home forever; I shall have heard
Death; I shall know that I have lived too long.

The Right

This sonnet is yet another about unprofessed love. I wrote it rather hurriedly a few years ago while waiting for my father at his doctor's appointment, and while I don't consider it to be one of my better sonnets, it's straightforward and pretty well crafted. Very "by the book." It's one of those poems I've never sent out to editors and never will. The reason I'm posting it today, despite my lukewarm feelings for it, is that I'm running out of poems to post, believe it or not! I'm not what you'd call prolific, and am known to go through long periods without writing a word of verse. Plus which, my life has been so blessedly even and uneventful lately, I even find it hard to write a journal post. I am definitely not a disciplined, work-a-day kind of writer! Would that I were.

 

 

The Right

 

I could not love you more if you were mine,

Or were I to proclaim it by a vow,

To promise till the end of earthly time

What I had promised once and promise now.

 

I would not love you less were I to live

The whole of life deprived of your consent,

That sacred confidence you cannot give,

Without which I would still remain content.

 

If love is judged by time and trial withstood,

And vows are made to God and not to flesh,

Then you are mine by right of faithfulness,

And mine by right of willing you His good.

 

Though it may slumber silent in my breast,

My right to love you will not die unblessed.

 

© Leticia Austria 2010

The Ideal

Poems are often products of a low patch, a. k. a. depression. Sometimes writing, especially poetry, helps me to be more objective about whatever it is I'm struggling through, because of the objectivity that necessarily goes into the crafting of a poem. And the more I write, the more I distance myself, not from the problem itself, but the negativity it generates. So I don't think of such poems as depressing in themselves, but as a purgation.

The Ideal

I've heard it said that only the ideal
Carved out of want or spun from fractured dreams
Can lift the soul, and render what is real
Exalted, loftier than what it seems.
This may be so; but then, what of the pain
Which never having touched the height has wrought?
What of the reaching time and time again,
To end in losing sight of what was sought?
I had imagined once, in simpler days,
That loving in itself was absolute;
I could not see, so upward was my gaze,
The price exacted by this high pursuit:
Exalting what is obdurately real
While sinking with the weight of an ideal.

© Leticia Austria 2008

Intercession

This sonnet was written during a period of experimentation. I was playing with a more casual style than the ultra-formal, quasi-Victorian one I had been using before this. I tried, in this poem and in others of that period, to hide both meter and rhyme underneath very conversational language, abundant enjambment, and even dividing words at the ends of lines to mask the rhyme. This actually gave me a greater ease and freedom with the sonnet form, so that when I later pulled back into a stricter formality, the results were more fluid and flexible, and less self-conscious, than they had been in the beginning.

Intercession

Since you will not, then I will pray instead.
I cannot sit here idly by and watch
you turn away in anger.  I have read
the bitter words you wrote; I know the lash-
ings out in rage that temporarily
emasculate the man you really are.
The fight is every bit as fierce for me,
for life is but a constant waging war
against ourselves.  And since you will not fight,
then I must soldier on for both of us.
My prayers will sing continuously, despite
the weakness of my voice and soul.  My trust
is strong—and though yours may not be, I cannot care:
for what could Heaven be to me, without you there?


© Leticia Austria 2008

Revisiting My Very First Sonnet

     What formalist can forget the first sonnet he or she ever wrote? Mine came as an assignment for senior English. I can't remember the name of my teacher (as I recall, she wasn't that great a teacher), but I clearly recall that she only required we stick to either the Shakespearean or the Petrarchan rhyme scheme, but she didn't expect meter (much more difficult than rhyme). The day we handed our sonnets in, our teacher perched on her desk and read them all out loud, but without revealing their authors. They were, one after another, half-hearted, jokey, disrespectful attempts, and I could see her becoming both discouraged and angry with each poem. Finally, she came to mine. She began reading it in a weary voice, expecting it to be yet another jokey attempt. At the end of the fourth line, she paused in surprise and looked at the class with a relieved smile. When she finished, she asked, "Did you all understand what the poem was saying?" Then she read it again.

     I think that was the moment my childhood desire to write was cemented.

     Incredibly, after all these years, I still remember that sonnet word for word, even though all written copies of it are long lost. A few years ago, I revised it, primarily giving it meter and polishing up the language. I also changed the rhyme scheme from Petrarchan to Shakespearean. Many of my friends have read both versions; some actually prefer the original for its simplicity and youthful voice.

Small Talk (1977)

As we weave our web of words, staring,
Gazing out the window with private dreams
Locked in our minds, how strange it seems
That here we are, speaking, but not really sharing.
Too tired to listen, not in the least caring
What the other says, we think of schemes
To escape this farce of masks and screens,
To rid ourselves of the frozen smiles we're wearing.
Instead, we go on with our pointless chat,
Fidgeting uncomfortably with each prolonged pause,
While searching desperately for some silly sentence.
What would it be like if we simply sat,
Without feeling so obliged to the dubious cause
Of prim convention and social eloquence?


The Art of Conversation (2010)

We weave a silken thread while private dreams
unfurl behind the diptych of our eyes
and cool façades of polished smiles; we scheme
to flee this habitat where broidered lies
and glib embellishments of fact reside.
Instead, we chatter on. Our platitudes
will serve to mask the homeliness inside.
But as the thread winds round the attitudes
we have so deftly wrought, beneath the pause
inevitably born, we ponder what
would come about if—artlessly—we sat,
unburdened from our duty to the cause
of weaving (for convention's dubious sake)
a thread that only truth could ever break.

© Leticia Austria

The Coziness of Delusion

     Recently, I had a reunion with a person who has known me for over half my life. In fact, we were in love, or something like it, for many years. But all that ended a long time ago, and both of us have changed—in my case, pretty radically. During our recent reunion chatting over coffee, I realized that we now have very little in common. The interests we shared years ago are no longer a viable part of my life, and the things that now absorb my time and mind are not a viable part of his. Still, there are friendships that can exist and even flourish despite big differences in interests and philosophies. It was this hope that prompted me to ask him if he ever reads this blog. Though I certainly don't tell the whole truth in these posts, I tell a lot of the truth, and if anyone cared to know who I am now and how I got to be who I am now, this blog is a great place to start. His answer saddened me.

     "No, I haven't read it. And I really don't think I ever will. Because that  'you' has nothing to do with me, and I want to remember you the way I knew you." A second passed before he added, "I know that isn't real."

     And I know now that he and I can never be complete friends. We can only be nostalgic friends. Like the "love" we once had, it's only friendship of a sort; there are too many things missing, essential things.

     A few years ago, I wrote a sonnet about this sort of delusion and how we cling to it. It wasn't written with this particular person in mind; it was written for someone else, of whom I myself had, admittedly, created a certain image, an image that is idealized—though I have, since writing the sonnet, come to know him better and more realistically.

Simulacrum

I couldn't bear it if the photograph
I took of you so long ago should fade.
Inside my journal, like an epitaph,
between the last two pages, it is laid
with care. From time to time I take it out,
to see if all the colors are still true,
make certain that the sentiment I wrote
is still defined, that time has not subdued
the spirit radiating from your eyes.
And if I can preserve it through the years,
perhaps the dream of you will never die
but flourish, ever luminous and clear.
I know you now just as I knew you then.
My captured image brings you back again.

© Leticia Austria 2009
First published in Dreamcatcher  (under the title "The Likeness")

The Bond of True Friendship

When I left "the world" to enter the cloister, my deepest sorrow was not, as one would think, leaving my family, but leaving my friends. My family, I knew, would always be there for me and I would be always in their hearts, and they would certainly visit as often as was permitted; but how many of my friendships would survive what could have been a lifelong separation? If I had remained in the cloister, taken solemn vows, it was quite possible that I would never again see any of them, unless they made the trip to Lufkin to visit, or to witness my Solemn Profession.

 

I did receive letters from some of my friends, and one of them did come for a brief visit. One, however, wrote to me far more often than the others. Oddly enough, it was a friend I hardly ever saw in person (and still see only rarely). I was so very grateful whenever my novice directress handed me an envelope scrawled with his familiar handwriting! It was during those two and a half years, enclosed in the monastery walls, that I learned how true a friend he was and is.

Forgetting

Forgetting is the thing I fear the most.
I can't forbid the fading of the day,
nor can I draw the curtains of your heart
against the void of predatory night.
The music we have shared, the scattered days,
are feeble beams of light across the sea
of separation, circumstance, and time.
That there may only be what there
has been, I won't regret. The one thing I
could never bear is that you would forget.


Assurance

"How could I forget you? Be sure of my eternal friendship,
     as I am sure of yours." ~ from a letter

There is a passacaglia in my mind
That plays its stately rhythm on those days
When faith becomes a nebulous, gray haze
And all bright hope lies languishing behind.
Its harmonies are simple, yet refined;
Its tune develops at a solemn pace;
There is comfort in its persistent bass,
A steady beat, dependable and kind.
Above all, its composer is most dear,
For it is you, who wrote it for my heart
When cloister walls had once kept me apart
From things familiar, things I held as mine.
It is my talisman against all fear
Of distance, and its thieving ally, time.


Definition of "passacaglia"
© Leticia Austria 2008, 2011

Resignation

Not heaven, nor the stars that light its door,
Not pledge of troth, nor promises or vow,
Not breath, nor touch, nor heart's inviolate core
Have I required, nor do I ask them now.
The lips that only lover's lips could kiss,
The words that only lover's heart could say,
The silence shared in nights of deepest bliss,
These I could never have, nor ever may.
I've known my place, and to it I keep true;
The space between remains, since space must be;
I am all I could ever be to you,
And all that you could give, you've given me.
To this, my hope I willingly resign;
It is enough, for it alone is mine.

© Leticia Austria 2008
This sonnet is one of the original sonnet of sonnets from The Distant Belovèd

Reflection: Looking Inward and Backward

     I thought it fitting, this being the start of a new year, and everyone reflecting on the old year, to post a sonnet that's "backwards." I call it "Sonnet in Reflection" for two reasons: 1) the meter is trochaic pentameter rather than iambic and therefore backwards, or in "reflection" as in a mirror; and 2) it is a sonnet about reflection in solitude. When we are alone in silence or near-silence, we tend to self-examination and/or meditation on the past. That is only human nature, whether we like it or not.

     I suppose I could have taken the backwards concept all the way and put the ending couplet at the beginning. In fact, I could still do that; the poem would still work starting with the couplet, then the rest as is. Maybe I will do that someday. But I'll leave it for now. It's not my favorite poem, nor do I think it's my best effort. If I were to revise it, or try to write an altogether new "sonnet in reflection," I'd attempt to make the linebreaks more graceful, using fewer enjambments, and use nothing but two-syllable rhymes (to better reinforce the trochees). But someone liked this one enough to publish it, and for that I'm grateful!

Sonnet in Reflection

Thoughts loom larger in a room made narrow
by necessity, and blunted dreams take
on a sharper edge; the days, once furrowed
with the care of ordinary things, make
smoother strides from dark to light. Reflections
are the tapestries of solitude; their
stitches stitch themselves, and vivisect one's
reasoning in disconcerting ways. Bare
images emerge that one would rather
keep beneath one's clothing, manifesting
secrets spun where old ambitions gather
dust: the stuff of truth, the soul's divesting.
Self, obscured by living, now is clearer,
seen in solitude's relentless mirror.

© Leticia Austria 2009
First published in The Lyric



"Lady Looking in the Mirror"
John William Waterhouse



Hindsight

How could I love so long, yet long to love?
If such a paradox could truly be,
Such question raised, it would perhaps behoove
Us both to view the past with clarity.
Now that denial's turbid haze has flown,
I see I touched you with the desperate hand
Of one whose need was wildly overgrown,
And held you in a girl's possessive bond.
A sort of love it was, but not of truth;
And woman's better sense acknowledged this,
Not with resentment or regret for youth,
But new resolve to search for what was missed.
I loved you long, but longing sharpened sight;
By letting go, we both have won the fight.

© Leticia Austria 2008

Unrequited

It will not come to dust, of that I'm sure;
for now it is embalmed, eternally
suspended, like the mythic moth made pure
within its amber flame, whose worth will be
in death what quickening breath cannot convey.
Of little consequence, that I have paid
the price of heavy years, if it might stay
preserved forever.  Nature's hand has made
its gems from silent ends, and it will make
a million more, as long as loves may die
unrealized; and, grieving, it may slake
their thirst with resin tears in which they'll lie
as relics ever incorrupt.  What cost,
then, but the wood predestined to be lost?

First published (in slightly altered form) in Decanto
© Leticia Austria 2010

Haunted

Edvard Munch
"Girl in Nightgown"

 

Haunted

 

I cannot sleep; my mind's too full of him.

What right has he to haunt me, since I vowed

that I would no more think of him aloud,

but store him safe away inside my dim

attic of thoughts?  And if I sleep, I dream

of walking with him through a dappled wood;

then, waking, shadows of his visage cloud

my sight.  The morning's nascent sunbeams brim

with hazy phantoms from the night before

that sharpen in the glare of afternoon;

when evening glooms, I once again make grim

resolve that I will think of him no more;

at night I lie here staring at the moon.

I cannot sleep.  My mind's too full of him.

 

 

© Leticia Austria 2008
First published in Lucidity, in slightly altered form

George Clausen
"In the Wee Hours"









From My Big Orange Book

In my Big Orange Book I have copied down several poems by American lyric poet Sara Teasdale. Her poems have resonated with me since college, when I found an early edition of her volume Love Songs in an antiquarian bookstore. She's been a major influence on my own poetry. Though her early work can at times be what one might call "sentimental," her best poems are, in my opinion, quite moving. Her language is accessible and also extremely musical, which is why many composers, including most notably John Duke, have chosen her texts to set to music.

 

Teasdale used this sonnet as the introduction to Love Songs. It has no title, but simply bears the dedication "To E." I assume she wrote it for her husband, Ernst Filsinger. It's one of my favorite Teasdale poems.

 

        I have remembered beauty in the night,

           Against black silences I waked to see

           A shower of sunlight over Italy

        And Green Ravello dreaming on her height;

        I have remembered music in the dark,

           The clean swift brightness of a fugue of Bach's,

           And running water singing on the rocks

        When once in English woods I heard a lark.

 

        But all remembered beauty is no more

           Than a vague prelude to the thought of you—

           You are the rarest soul I ever knew,

              Lover of beauty, knightliest and best;

        My thoughts seek you as waves that seek the shore,

              And when I think of you, I am at rest.

 

 

source



White Roses

"Woman with a Rose"
Kenneth Frazier



It has been my custom these past few years to listen to the "Sunday Baroque" program on the classical radio station while driving to Mass. One Sunday, they played music from John Blow's Venus and Adonis,  and the announcer, in her introduction, related a version of the myth I had never heard of before. I grew up with the version, first encountered in Edith Hamilton's Mythology, that "a crimson flower" sprang up where Adonis' blood fell. Other versions tell of a flower the hue of a pomegranate; still others plainly state that it was an anemone. The announcer on "Sunday Baroque," however, said that when Venus wept at Adonis' death, white roses sprang up where her tears fell. Almost immediately, a line in iambic pentameter came into my mind: "White roses bloom where I have shed my tears." I thought it a very good opener for a sonnet, and couldn't wait to get home and work on it. The notion that the goddess of love's deepest and purest love was for a man who never loved her in return moved me, as it hit very close to home—which is why I felt compelled to write the poem.

 

First, though, I did a bit of research on the net and found mention of the white rose twist of the myth, but couldn't find an actual text of the myth itself that included it. However, that doesn't mean one doesn't exist. I decided to keep the white roses, but the original line wound up being the closing line rather than the opener. In writing the first draft, I found myself associating the basic premise of the story with the concept of courtly love, or chaste love, symbolized by alabaster as well as the white rose, which in turn brought in the reference to carnal love, symbolized by the red, or "ruddy" rose.

The rhyme scheme of this sonnet is a bit unusual: abcdabcd eeffgg

 



White Roses 

 

He lay in alabaster night; no kiss

of ruddy rose had ever touched his limbs.

No hand of mine, however loving, dared

to break the night's pure silence, choosing life

eternal over momentary bliss.

Had bold, irreverent songs drowned out the hymns

that brought his sleep, had baser instinct bared

what better instinct hid, then day's bright knife

 

would have cut short that alabaster night

and taken him forever from this sight;

then in the place of his ennobled brow,

there would not be the witness living now:

that after all the staid, untarnished years,

white roses bloom where I have shed my tears.

 

 

© Leticia Austria 2010

Autumn Idyll

"Fall Canopy"
Vladimir Sorin

 

Autumn Idyll

 

Perhaps I'll see him in another place,

A softer world, where we may know the sighs

And slanted tone of autumn's lullabies,

Where leaves embellish paths of shadow-lace;

A place where days go round with measured pace

And footsteps linger. Nothing would disguise,

In such a world, the gladness in his eyes,

Or dim the shining candor in my face.

And I will tell him what I long to tell;

My veil will fall as limpid as a leaf

Through windless air. It would be too unkind,

Good sense, to shatter this idyllic spell!

Allow this lovely, gossamer belief

To gleam, oblique as autumn, in my mind.

 

 

© Leticia Austria 2010



In Celebration of the Coming of Autumn

source

 

At Summer's End

 

At summer's end I'll harvest all the fruit,

clusters of hope made ripe by rain and sun

on wizened, gnarled vines sinewy of root.

 

I'll crush it with the weight of life begun

in youth-blind earnestness, burnished by dust

of shattered goals and victories hard-won;

 

and when the broken flesh, fermented must,

is freed of all its pomace, I will fine

it till it's pure, then wait with steady trust.

 

Matured by nature's hand, sweetened with time

in weathered oaken barrels, the fruit born

of callow dreams will yield a mellow wine.

 

I'll sip the wine with wisdom lately learned,

in autumn leisure, fought for, sorely earned.

 

 

© Leticia Austria 2009

First published in The Storyteller

Two Love Poems

BLESSED

I have been blessed by the stillness of your eyes,
The jagged edges of my heart smoothed,
Calmed, the ancient fray long fought.
No balm so sure, nor touch as sweetly healing
As the unconscious kiss of your eyes,
Their ingenuous power.
Even through the fallow procession of years
Bereft of you in voice and flesh,
Still I am not forsaken;
The remembrance of that exquisite stillness,
Like the strains of a Chopin nocturne,
Whispers through my whirring thoughts.
Once again, you heal me;
Once more, I am blessed.

The following sonnet, about unprofessed love, was inspired by this passage in E. H. Young's novel The Misses Mallet:

'But after all,' Charles said more clearly, 'it doesn't matter about being acclaimed. It's just like making music for deaf people: the music's there; the music's there. And so it doesn't matter very much whether you love me. It's one's weakness that wants that, one's loneliness. I can love you just the same, perhaps better; it's the audience that spoils things. I should think it does!'

 CONSTANCY

Nessun amore più vero di quello che muore non rivelato. - Old Italian proverb *

My music sounds, though there is none to hear.
What does it signify, the empty space
it fills? My sounds make this a sacred place.
There could not be a more attentive ear,
nor one more sympathetic, than the chair
that sits so priest-like there, while down the glass
fall contrite tears of one more autumn passed:
another season, and another year.
My music sounds within these hallowed walls;
it vibrates in the darkened corners, falls
upon the empty shelves and empty tabletops.
Around this lonely space its blessings flow,
absolving all my dead, unrealized hopes
whose ashes I had scattered long ago.

* No truer love than that which dies unrevealed.


Poems © Leticia Austria 2007, 2008
"Blessed" first published in Decanto
"Constancy" first published in Dreamcatcher

A Sunday Sonnet

BENEFICENCE

Thou art too loving and too gen'rous, Lord,
Forgiving such an errant one as I!
My soul's recalcitrance doth not accord
With grace benign, nor boundless clemency.
Unfaithful she hath been, self-willed and proud,
Sustained by praise and honour transient,
Imprisoned by her restlessness and vowed
Unto herself; but Thou, beneficent,
Didst care for naught but she remaineth Thine;
For what be Thine may yet possesseth not
Such merit worthy of Thy grace divine.
No matter to Thy Heart, which counteth not
This paltry worth, so infinite Its store:
Much as is giv'n, there ever shall be more.

© 2006 Leticia Austria, revised 2010

Fin' Amor (Courtly Love)

My collection of love poems, The Distant Belovèd, began with 14 sonnets and 14 lyrics. Each group of 14 told the story, chronologically, of an unrequited love I have actually experienced. Over the past few years since completing those first 28 poems, the collection has expanded and today consists of almost 70 poems -- sonnets, formal lyrics, syllabic lyrics, and a very few free verse pieces. I have translated most of the poems into Italian, since the collection is written for an Italian and takes inspiration from both Dante's Vita Nova and the many poems Petrarch wrote for his Laura. This sonnet, "Fin' Amor," is from The Distant Belovèd's original "sonnet of sonnets" (which simply means a group of 14 sonnets, related by theme).

The world has known this kind of love before,
And better bards have poured out on the page
What I have tried to say. Upon this score
I've no illusions. Echoes from an age
When loving was a fine, ennobling art,
Suspire commiseration in my ear
And offer sweetest solace to my heart.
I am not alone. This orbiting sphere,
So full of folly, yearning, joy, and pain,
Will always know the weeping born of bliss,
Will always catch the fool who falls again,
For life and art depend on such as this.
     Laugh, scorn, or pity: no matter to me;
     For I will love, as long as love will be.


Il mondo ha già conosciuto questo tipo d'amore,
e poeti migliori versavano sulla pagina
ciò che ho cercato di dire. Su questo punto
non ho nessuna illusione. Echi d'un epoca
quando l'amare era un'arte bella e nobile,
sussurrano commiserazione nel mio orecchio
e offrono al cuor il conforto più dolce.
Non son sola. Questa sfera orbitante,
così piena di follia, desiderio, gioia, e pena,
sempre conoscerà il pianto nato di beatitudine,
sempre prenderà lo sciocco che cade di nuovo,
perché da queste cose dipendono la vita e l'arte.
     Ridete, schernite, o compatite: non m'importa;
     perché amerò fintanto che l'amore sarà.

[Translation by Leticia with Federica Galetto]