Shall I Compare thee to a Petrachan Sonnet?
December 31, 2008
shall I compare to a petrachan sonnet
the tiny snail from Italy, with shell
like the fossil of a verse in a bell
and fist of words curled up in it’s forest.
lumaca, chiocciola, snail slow bonnet
Italiano mollusco, farewell
you who is homesick but cannot sell
shells on the beach, to float back like a promise.
Little sonnet: are you sung by the snail
in the night on the beach? are your fourteen lines
hung like a prayer by it’s lungs like a wail?
Did Petrarch know it was not his rhyme
but the ring of hermaphrodite, male/female
that was imported first. Would he mind?
Happy New Year! Very clever and humourous. i wrote this off the cuff this morning. i was standing at the bus stop with Awful Alf yesterday.
Ode to a domestic vacuum cleaner (NOT)
She came to me in spluttering detail
After her arrival in Flat 3
(Below me)
The knock on the door
A long strand of dark hair
On the floor,
The shout in the hallway
The unspoken invitation
To enter her lair
Then the instruction
“Stand on this chair”
Reaching out into nothing
Grasping thin air
I made physical contact….
with the light socket
Tentatively
Nothing again
She was looking up at me
Silence, separation
This is comic
I thought
No spark between us, I leave
Soon she was gone
The tall dark willowy woman
From flat three
Departed without bliss
Not a message, a call or even a kiss
I traced my steps downstairs
To the yard below
And by the bin there
Her ageing Hoover vacuum cleaner
Stood lonely without a care
Almost new unused
Thank you black willow
Though I never knew your name
tony