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

Story of an End

Exposition

I've left my door ajar, as you have yours;
but while your lamps are seldom lit, I leave
mine burning full.  I'm not afraid of flame.
Whatever you may glimpse inside is all
there is of me, contained in one small room;
and should you spot a volume on the shelf—
protected in a slipcase—you might see
your name upon its spine.  Know, then, that I
have left it there for you to read someday,
if ever you decide to venture in.


Dénouement

Your door is shut and all is dark as death.
There is a terrible finality
that hovers in the very air around
that door; and as I pass it by, I bow
my head and clutch my shawl beneath my chin
as though in mourning.  I have no wish to stay;
for if I dared to knock, I'd only hear
an echo answer from the darkened room;
then I would know that you were lost to me,
and that my book lay dusty on the floor.

© Leticia Austria 2008, 2009
"Exposition" was originally titled "On the Shelf"; under that title, it won First Prize in the Awaken the Sleeping Poet contest in 2008 and was first published in Dreamcatcher.

Of Dreams

L'Invito

Come to me in dreams, since truth denies me;
In night's darkling womb I may feel your breath
Upon my cheek, and for that moment know
What day's unvarnished light will not allow.
Night is kind to those who may never have;
Its brush is forgiving, its canvas wide;
It paints me lying against your shoulder,
And I remain content while sleep accords.
Stay with me, then, belovèd, just this night,
And give sweet respite to my heart's unrest.


After the Dream

With widening dawn
fragments bloom
like passion flowers:

a smile I recall
but never saw,

a voice from your lips,
yet strange and new,

embraces hidden from history
beneath the heavy cloak of sleep.

Dark disperses, light gathers,
morning quickens, fragments fuse and form,
the vista of day's long hours
brightens

as I remember
the you I knew in the night.


© Leticia Austria 2008, 2012

Notti Bianche (Sleepless Nights)

After many, many months of being very, very lazy and not sending out any poems, I got off my proverbial duff and sent a few to The Lyric, a fine publication that specializes in formal poetry. It is, in fact, the longest continuously running (93 years) journal of formal poetry in the United States. I have been published by them twice before, and am very happy that they accepted my work a third time.

 

This is the poem that appears in their Winter 2013 issue. It was originally titled "Notti Bianche," which is Italian for "sleepless nights" (literally, "white nights"). I gave it the Italian title because it is included in my as-yet-unpublished collection The Distant Belovèd, but I thought that the English title would make more sense when the poem appeared outside the collection.

 

 

 



Notti Bianche (Sleepless Nights)

When even dreams deprive me of the face
that more than common slumber is my rest,
then I will give the dark to nights of white
and paint a wakeful rest on nothingness.

I'll trace the lines—so well do I recall!—
as slowly as the swing of winter stars,
and contemplate the histories behind
each angle, curve, and slope, the rugged arcs.

But only when desire's painstaking brush
completes the blessed stillness of the eyes,
will deep content take hold and wakefulness
become a prayer, the holiest of sighs.


© Leticia Austria 2010
First published in The Lyric and winner of the 2013 Leslie Mellichamp Prize

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

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

The Dream

With widening dawn
fragments bloom
like passion flowers:

I smile I recall
but never saw,

a voice from your lips,
yet strange and new,

embraces hidden from history
beneath the heavy cloak of sleep.

Dark disperses as light gathers,
morning quickens, fragments fuse and form;

the vista of day's long hours
brightens
as I remember
the you I knew in the night.

© Leticia Austria 2012

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

Passeggiata (Stroll)

"Lovers in a Woodland Clearing"
John Atkinson Grimshaw



 

I know there are no pine trees in this lovely painting; still, I thought the image well-suited to this poem, one of my earlier efforts, and the first to be published for a wider audience.

 

Passeggiata (I)
[pah-sed-JAH-ta - the "i" is not pronounced]

 

Walk with me.

The path beckons, winking in the dawnlight,

And the pines' drowsy whisperings call us

To quiet joy.  The sun through the branches

Welcomes our like hearts with perceptive arms

Limpid with the memory of darkness.

Now is our moment of peace.  We are led

On this narrow way through familiar lands

Defined in my mind; for I have mapped out

All my memories in these woods and fields;

Each blade and limb and stone has its country,

And all sing to me of God's sure blessing.

Could He begrudge me your dear company,

Poignant and wistful as the rain lily

I pressed among words of silent longing?

You are here, belovèd, bright in my heart,

Mine alone for this all-too-fleeting joy,

This, my moment of highest fulfillment:

My spirit and yours, walking together,

Hand in hand.

Cammina con me.
Il sentiero accenna, ammiccando nella luce dell'alba,
E il sussurrare sonnolento dei pini si chiama
Alla gioia tranquilla.  Il sole fra i rami
Accoglie i nostri cuori con braccia perspicaci
Limpidi con la memoria del buio.
Ora è il nostro momento di pace.  Siamo condotti
Su questa stretta via attraverso terre familiari
Definite nella mia mente; perché ho mappato
Tutti i miei ricordi in questi boschi e campi;
Ogni filo d'erba e ramo e pietra ha la sua patria,
E tutto canta a me della certa benedizione di Dio.

Potrebbe Lui invidiarmi la tua cara compagnia,
Commovente e malinconica come il giglio selvatico
Da me pressato fra le parole di desiderio silente?
Tu sei qui, adorato, radioso nel mio cuore,
Il mio solo per tutta questa troppo fuggevole gioia,
Questo, il mio momento di maggiore appagamento:
Il mio spirito ed il tuo, a camminare insieme
Mano nella mano.
 

© Leticia Austria 2007
First published in English in The San Antonio Express-News

Italian translation by Federica Galetto, published in La Stanza di Nightingale

 

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"









Too Romantic?

     I thought I could never get this poem published. It's hard to know if a poem is too emotional or sentimental or overly romantic. In a book on poetry by poet Ted Kooser, there is a poem by another contemporary poet which Kooser said was dangerously close to being too romantic. I thought, "Well, then I must be a downright sap, because I actually think it's somewhat restrained." Compared to Barrett Browning, Byron, and Shakespeare, in fact, I thought it was pretty darn tame! This is why I think many of my poems are unpublishable; but I've discussed (whined about) this at length in earlier posts.

     So I'm very grateful indeed to the editor of Decanto not only for accepting this poem, but for accepting it with alacrity. There are still a few editors out there who embrace the romantic.

     The Falling

     There was something in your soul
     that wrapped around my reason—
     lyrical, warm, and lovely.

     My mind stood still, so it might
     fathom the fugitive light
     that spoke to me through your eyes,

     so it might plumb the shadows
     that softened the sharp corners
     of your uncompromising

     yet humble intelligence.
     My restless hands stretched, yearning,
     to learn the complex texture

     of your deep simplicity;
     the once insensate days pulsed
     with the rhythms of your voice.

     I rejoiced in the rapture
     of knowing that on this earth
     burned the splendor of your soul.

© Leticia Austria 2011
First published in Decanto

Golden Light

John Atkinson Grimshaw
"Golden Light"

 

 

Giuramento (Oath)

 

If autumn's graces never came again,

Its lace no longer glimmered in the lane,

Its leaves no longer wept with cooling rain—

     Still, I would love.

 

Should autumn's music sing its last refrain

And summer ever glisten on the plain,

The memory of autumn will remain—

     So, too, my love.

 

© Leticia Austria 2009
First published in Decanto



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



Autumn in My Heart

     It's ironic, and a bit sad, that autumn is my favorite season and I live in a part of the country where it is almost unrecognizable. Except for the slightly cooler temperatures and the odd flame-leafed tree, autumn here is more a state of mind than a season. By the time Halloween comes and images of leering jack-o-lanterns confront me at every turn, reminding me that it is indeed autumn, autumn is already a third gone.

     I like to call it "autumn" rather than "fall" simply because it sounds more poetic, and it is a poetic season. I also like the way the word looks, with the twin "u"s and the side-by-side "m" and "n" that almost make your lips hum just by seeing them; there's a savory, comforting roundness to the letters themselves. The adjective, too—"autumnal"—is a wonderful word to say and see. The stressed second syllable sounds like dry leaves tumbling down the street in a brisk wind, and the "t" amid all those rounded letters is balanced by the noble Doric column of the "l." (Well, it's a Doric column when it appears in a serif font.)

     Why is autumn my favorite season, when I live where it is almost non-existent? That's precisely why. It is a quirk of human nature that the thing most lacking and yearned for is the thing that's most appealing and cherished. "The grass is greener ..." and all that; or, in this case, "the leaves are redder ...." But there is another, more concrete reason: it was in autumn that my life took a definite turn for the better, though I didn't realize it then. Looking back, I see my life clearly divided by that one autumn; everything before it is indistinct, and everything after it sharply focused.

Ricordo

Each year the light of autumn weaves new lace;
Each year the shade of autumn slows the pace;
Each autumn I recall another place,
     Another year.

A time when music sang with sweeter grace,
When music lay in autumn's cool embrace;
The autumn when I first beheld your face,
     And time stood still.

[© Leticia Austria. First published in Dreamcatcher.]

Autumn read: Persuasion. Austen's last novel and my favorite of hers. Anne Elliott is also my favorite Austen heroine. The story of a long-lost but still-alive love restored to a woman who, in that era, was considered to be on the verge of spinsterhood (at the ripe age of twenty-eight), has a strong autumnal slant. Austen's writing, too, is more mellow and reflective here than in her other novels.

Autumn watch: Besides the exquisite 1995 BBC film adaptation of Persuasion, I would choose a comedy like Something's Gotta Give or It's Complicated—both about late middle-age romance.

Autumn listen: Schumann's great song cycle Dichterliebe, or the late Beethoven piano sonatas. Also, Chopin nocturnes and sonatas.

Autumn artist: American Impressionist Edward Cucuel (1879-1954)

"Two Girls in White beside a Lake in Autumn"



"Herbstlandschaft"

 

"Golden Autumn"

 

And my favorite:

"Beside a Lake in Autumn"

    

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