I tried to stop writing and focus simply
on promoting my book,
but more sonnets have happened, and other verse,
too.
(c) 2018 Vern Barnet, Kansas City,
MO
A FRESH SONNET
A friend asked me about enjambment, a technical
term in poetry for the continuation of a thought without a pause beyond
the end of a line or other section of a poem. Since it has been so long
since I wrote a new sonnet, this one sprang forth, in the context of a
friend’s interest in science. The octave is
free of enjambment, but each pair of lines in the third quatrain illustrates
gentle enjambment such as Shakespeare frequently employed in the Sonnets.
A Lover
Undresses His Beloved
with apologies to John Donne
“Euclid alone
has looked on Beauty bare.”
—Edna
St Vincent Millay (1892-1950)
IF EUCLID surely looked on beauty
bare,
and Kepler heard the music
of the spheres,
with Newton’s
moon and apple one affair,
and Einstein saw in space
what we call years,
If Mendel saw how traits
succeed and pass,
and Darwin taught us how
what lives evolves,
If Higgs gave gauge bosons
their certain mass,
and helix men have proof
all doubt dissolves,
Then what of St Teresa and
that thrust
repeated till she quivered
with God’s zeal,
or Rumi’s
longing for the one whose trust
made in him all the gloried
world congeal?
Let us discover what is now
and dear
when we behold what present
is bare here.
____
John Donne, Dean of St Paul’s
Cathedral, dubbed a 'metaphysical’ poet by
Dr Johnson, used odd scientific conceits in many of his poems, including
the sexy ones.The epigraph is the first line from one of Millay’s
most famous sonnets.The puns are obvious, and I hope enjoyable. The “helix
men” are, of course Watson and Crick of DNA fame.
ANOTHER FRESH SONNET
I’ve been reading about
the “neo-baroque” style of literature, thinking about the historic baroque
period in the arts (such as Don Quixote, Las Meninas, Bernini’s
David, Bach — perhaps the English “metaphysical
poets” can be considered baroque) and in what little I know of the neo-baroque
in recent Spanish literature. And, as I write this, Holy Week approaches.
A Neo-Baroque
Easter
“I was a hidden treasure
and I yearned to be known.
Then I created creatures
in order to be known by them.” —Hadith
In the beginning was the
Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
—
John 1:1
He fathers-forth whose
beauty is past change.
-
—“Pied
Beauty,” Gerard Manley Hopkins
Now Person’s words that here
appear diffuse,
dissolved, absorbed, like
terrorists who hide
among civilians whose conditions
bruise
distinctions (fore- and background
coincide)
and any person’s
words, endeavors, dear,
disguised by past forgotten
caves and days,
obscure the matter with a
face of cheer,
will still God’s wrath and
grace with one clear phrase.
Then shines the sun and that
one Person’s raise
to God (for He is God) forth
colors bloom
and with this Easter power
does still blaze
raised hope from every person’s
inward tomb.
Who speaks these words (perhaps
a lonely God)
creates a lovely world that’s
even odd.
A THIRD FRESH SONNET
I woke up Apr 19 with the scroll in my mind and
wrote the following sonnet. Although it is based on a Western fascination
with history and thus distorts the intent of the painting, part of the
collection at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (you can find an image at
the UChicago
site and a text
from the Nelson here) and a commentary
here mainly on the First Prose Poem. I record my sonnet here for what
it might be worth simply as a piece of writing. (During his exile, Su Shi
and his friends in 1082 visited the site of the historical battlefield,
the Red Cliffs (Battle of Chibi), 208/209 led to the end of the Han dynasty,
some twelve years before the Three Kingdoms period. Still, the scroll is
really about nature and not history, so I intend to write a more correct
sonnet to redeem this initial effort. This is an example of ekphrastic
poetry -- a description of sorts of a scene or visual work of art.
An American Looks
at Su Shi’s Night Adventure
On viewing Qiao
Zhongchang’s
Illustration
to the Second Prose Poem on the Red Cliff
You left your friends to be
alone,
unsettled into nature’s rocks
and streams,
familiar trees were changed
as moonlight shown
into mystery and history’s
regimes.
The overgrowth and tangles
trip your voice
to shout into the cliff which
echoes out
a question charged, Do we
have fate or choice?
By crane’s sharp cry your
quiet boat marks doubt.
I see you dream immortals
in your home,
but what is space and time
and really real?
How much environment, how much genome?
Are choices freely made or
by fate's wheel?
So Han, or Gettysburg, or
World Trade plots—
In God’s great gambling house,
are such just slots?
SHORTER NOTE Qiao Zhongchang was active in the early 12th Century. The handscroll
inspiring this sonnet was itself inspired by the earlier poem by Su Shi, late 11th Century. This world-famous work pf many scenes is in the collection
of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, MO.
Details about the handscroll here.
A FOURTH FRESH SONNET
I woke up early one morning after the day before
I learned that the results of a CT scan revealed a spot on my pancreas.
I was determined to complete my work as best I could in what time remained
to me, and to enjoy each moment as fully as possible. The story below was
vivid for me. Then I wrote the sonnet. (A follow-up CT scan suggests the
spot is merely a benign cyst, through another scan in a year is recommended.)
A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger.
He fled, the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of
the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger
sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far
below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him.
Two mice, one white and
one black, little by little started to gnaw away the vine. The man saw
a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked
the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted!
—Paul
Reps, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones,
p22-23.
The
Berry
A young Zen guy by tiger chased
to edge,
to cliff, to precipice, to
fringe, to end,
now fleeing, forced. he falls
from final ledge;
no lifting angel saves; he
must descend.
Below a further beast awaits
with jaws
slobbering to taste this
saintly meal
assured by gravity and nature’s
laws
he’ll not defeat sure death,
nor time repeal.
He spies and grabs a berry
as he spills
below, and from that twig
tastes heaven’s best:
delicious! in this briefest
second, thrills!
Then body torn asunder finds
full rest.
The Fall is certain danger; I spy Christ,
a berry so delicious, sacrificed.
My
pancreatic cancer spies me Christ,
a berry so delicious, sacrificed.
A FIFTH FRESH SONNET
I had no intention of writing, but this spilled out
quickly as I looked out the counterfactual window, imagining my summer
youth on an Iowa farm.
The
Farm
The snow was falling, summer
leaves now wet,
their green glistening; no
polarized lens
extracts their weather magic;
no, not yet;
and livestock shiver in their
sudden pens.
The wet turns green to glaze,
ablaze in lights
the red truck throws while
engine fails to click;
so unprepared, the cold,
the silence frights
so still, so unforecast,
this nature’s trick.
And yet sublime: this helpless
scene, this farm
of art construed by chance
and cortex curl
drafts purest gold if what
we thought was harm
calls forth this precious
moment in snow’s swirl.
This treat of dying slows the mind to see
a shattering drift of black eternity.
A SIXTH NEW SONNET
A clergyman friend of mine suffered a stroke. I
wrote this for him as he was hospitalized and recovering with therapy.
The Stroke
When what befalls is furnished
with a stroke
with plans thus banged aside
like broken beams
and dreams disintegrate as
if one woke
while cream is mixed with
stone or so it seems —
When pleasant glass instead
becomes a glare
with child’s play now confounding
as a chore
and what was full is focused
on the spare
while precious are what empty
shelves still store,
Then I pray Thanks that glory
may be found
in even a position that’s
been crossed,
for any mishap may with care
be crowned
and more be gained than what’s
been lost.
Our God casts all times sacred, every place,
and kisses all conditions with His grace.
A SEVENTH NEW SONNET
In Another Universe, Isaac Newton
Falls in Love
“The fitful
tracing of a portal”—Wallace
Stevens
We sense transcendent presences
will last,
yet all tight windings soldered in
the brain,
gesticulations now, shaped by the
past,
distrust such intimations, disdain,
feign.
For our anesthetizing, digital
reality is commerce more than creed;
we see our lives played out as fictional,
a flat identity, procumbent greed.
Though quantum nothingness quakes
minds aghast,
here is this tree, this soil, this
sky, this you
and me in this fine kiss, eternal,
fast,
delicious, bold, our end and our
debut.
This waking tremble world makes us
its guest;
it radiates, tumbles words, breath
to rest.
For earlier versions, visit drafts
NEW
SONNET EIGHT
Slightly better
than doggeral, it served its purpose.
(“Feet”
is a triple pun, in case anyone is counting.)
Poetic Feet
Apollo in disguise,
you are my friend:—
the Appalachian
Trail’s poetic
feet
in epic time
you gather and transcend
becoming bard
and spiritual athlete.
Some music,
ancient art, and food we share,
though parking
was a scraping, crunching turn,
reminding us
that life requires repair:
young you,
old me, we both are here to learn.
I hope at last
you got a good night’s rest
and find today’s
delights include your pen
to tell the
story of your trek with zest
to bring to
present what was glory then.
I celebrate
your love of nature’s art
with words
that trace a beauty in your heart.
NEW SONNET
NINE
Descartes’s
Vortices
There is a
disk, a spot, a sphere of me
that rotates,
twists, dissolves, and reappears
a mirror scene
or pixel play to be
time’s Clorox
on my paper face and years.
This is, or
was, or what will be, is tense,
a light beam’s
history held choking tight
constructing
what we humans construe sense
and dense patterns:
you or me, wrong or right.
Beyond the dual-illusion,
the not-two,
the worldless,
wordless sun will set and shine
and make our
era’s shadows somehow true:
The lining
prism’s colors spread, divine.
The void that is the bathtub’s swirl and drain
can mystery export but not explain.
#drafts
Writing
a Sonnet
Each appearance*
of the muse is different.
Then the workmanship
begins.
Read the
latest version at the top first
or start
at the bottom to see how the sonnet formed.
As I reflect
on these drafts,
I see how
critical it is to get the sound right.
And the
proper title, in this case
9.
In Another
Universe, Isaac Newton Falls in Love
“The
fitful tracing of a portal” —Wallace
Stevens
We sense
transcendent presences will last,
yet all tight
windings soldered in the brain,
gesticulations
now, shaped by the past,
distrust such
intimations, disdain, feign.
For our anesthetizing,
digital
reality is
commerce more than creed;
we see our
lives played out as fictional,
a flat identity,
procumbent greed.
Though quantum
nothingness quakes minds aghast,
here is this
tree, this soil, this sky, this you
and me in this
fine kiss, eternal, fast,
delicious,
bold, our end and our debut.
This waking
tremble world makes us its guest;
it radiates,
tumbles words, breath to rest.
8.
In Another
Universe, Isaac Newton Falls in Love
We sense transcendent
presences will last,
yet all tight
windings soldered in the brain,
gesticulations
now, shaped by the past,
distrust such
intimations, disdain, feign.
For our anesthetizing,
digital
reality is
commerce more than creed;
we see our
lives played out as fictional,
a flat identity,
procumbent greed.
Though quantum
nothingness quakes minds aghast,
here is this
tree, this soil, this sky, this you
and me in this
fine kiss, eternal, fast,
in what is
real, our end and our debut.
This waking,
tremble world makes us its guest;
it radiates,
tumbles words, breath to rest.
7.
In Another
Universe, Isaac Newton Falls in Love
We sense transcendent
presences will last,
yet all these
windings soldered in the brain,
gesticulations
now, shaped by the past,
distrust such
intimations. What’s to gain?—
For our anesthetizing,
digital
reality is
commerce more than creed;
we see our
lives played out as fictional,
a flat identity,
procumbent greed.
Though quantum
nothingness quakes minds aghast,
here is this
tree, this soil, this sky, this you
and me in this
fine kiss, eternal, fast,
in what is
real, our end and our debut.
This waking
world (words tremble, tumble, rest)
radiates, a
breath given to each guest.
6.
No universe,
no kiss
We sense transcendent
presences will last,
yet all these
windings soldered in the brain,
gesticulations
now, shaped by the past,
distrust such
intimations. Do we strain?—
For our anesthetizing,
digital
reality is
commerce more than creed;
we see our
lives played out as fictional,
a flat identity,
procumbent greed.
Though quantum
nothingness quakes minds aghast,
here is this
tree, this soil, this sky, this you
and me in this
fine kiss, eternal, fast,
in what is
real, our end and our debut.
This waking
world (words tremble, tumble, rest)
radiates, a
breath given to each guest.
5.
We sense transcendent
presences will last,
yet all those
windings soldered in the brain,
gesticulations
now, shaped by the past,
distrust such
intimations. Are we sane?—
For our anesthetizing,
digital
reality is
commerce more than creed;
we see our
lives played out as fictional,
a flat identity,
procumbent greed.
And so this
tree, this soil, this sky, this you
and me in this
fine kiss (eternal, vast)
is what is
real, our end and our debut;
the quantum
everywhere is always cast.
This waking
(where words tremble, tumble, rest)
radiates, a
breath given to each guest.
There could
be nothing, but the guize of time
and space is
ours to share and find sublime.
and space is
ours to mime and stay sublime.
and space is
ours to claim sublime and mime.
4.
We sense transcendent
presences will last,
yet all those
windings soldered in the brain,
gesticulations
now, shaped by the past,
distrust such
intimations. Are we sane?
For our anesthetizing,
digital
reality is
commerce more than creed;
we see our
lives played out as fictional,
a flat identity,
procumbent greed.
And so this
tree, this soil, this sky, this you
and me in this
fine kiss (eternal, vast)
is what is
real, our end and our debut;
the quantum
everywhere is always cast.
kiss bliss
This waking,
where words tremble, and we kiss
and breathe
some cosmic fact within our bliss.
words tremble,
tumble, rest)
radiates, a
breath given from God’s Guest.
3.
We sense transcendent
presences will last,
yet all those
windings soldered in the brain,
gesticulations
now, shaped by the past,
distrust such
intimations. Are they sane?
For our anesthetizing,
digital
reality is
commerce more than creed;
we see our
lives played out as fictional,
a flat identity,
procumbent greed.
And so this
tree, this soil, this sky, this you
and me in this
embrace, eternal, vast,
is what is
real, our end and our debut;
the quantum
everywhere is always cast.
Words tremble,
tumble from their places and breath stops
kiss
bliss
This waking
where words tremble, tumble, stop
radiation
2.
We sense transcendent
presences so vast!
yet all those
windings soldered in the brain,
gesticulations
now, shaped by the past,
distrust such
intimations. Are they sane?
when our anesthetizing,
digital
reality is
commerce more than creed
and see our
lives played out as fictional.
1. FIRST
DRAFT
We sense a transcendent
presence so vast
when our anesthetizing,
digital
gesticulations
run out at last
and see our
lives fictional.
Idea:
The sacred is at the periphery of our awareness, and the distractions of
our commercial culture push it further from our consciousness. Yet moments
arise when we sense its grandeur and we are grateful to behold this mystery,
for there could have been nothing, no universe, no being, at all.
#itch [*Seldom does the muse appear
to me first with an idea; usually the muse is simply an itch; but I don’t
have documentation of such to offer. I also came to realize how Wallace
Stevens was influencing the kind of play between abstractions and concrete
images as the writing progressed.]
WORKING
I woke. A dream insinuating ease
erased my ignorance. Resolved to self,
a character whose unrehearsed degrees
like action toys arrayed upon a shelf
by accident or storm or blindfolded god,
I live, and I believe that I will die,
before the Singularity thinks all,
and all in all, and never wonder why,
with silicon, not carbon, protocol.
Then flesh, if digitized to every port,
will breathe a ghost of soul, consuming thought
transformed to quantum
O thou Total Universal Robot,
The infinite nodes of Eternity
#Eclipse
TOTAL ECLIPSE (c) 2017
Vern Barnet, Kansas City, MO
O mighty music
of the spheres, now sigh!
and hush
your circling song as day turns still;
your majesty
must modest be, and shy,
for rare
impairment’s danger plays with thrill.
The sun, the faithful king of age
and day,
whose yearly
and diurnal journeys count,
the eye
by which the world can work and play,
is dark!
—
and yields to stars his full amount.
Those frightened ancients played to
Einstein’s clue
when Sol’s
own tune gapped, gasped, in orbit’s race:
A rest in
music amplifies the view
of sacred
patterns perfectly in space.
This pause, short dark, now foreground,
plays our sight,
refreshes
usual ground — and gives
delight.
———
The sun’s Latin name
is Sol (often pronounced “soul”) which is
why we call the arrangement of bodies around the sun the “solar
system.” Beginning at least with Pythagoras and through the Renaissance,
musica
universalis was part of a unifying picture of the cosmos, an arrangement
of spheres described in terms of music, mathematics, and astronomy.
As musical tones vary according to the length of the instrument’s
strings (or tubes or slats or such), so the orbits of celestial bodies
were thought in proportion to generate a heavenly harmony too great for
human ears. The musical theme is insinuated in each stanza with “play.”
Data from the 1919 total
eclipse, observed by Eddington, was an early verification of Einstein’s
Theory of Relativity. “Rest” and “ground”
include musical meanings and confound hearing, vision (background), and
other sensibilities.
With variation, calling
the sun the eye of day has been a poetic convention at least since Sophocles.
And “Sol” is, of course, a delicious paronomasia,
pun, for us stirred by the eclipse.
And with the couplet’s
“gives
delight,” I tried for a Shakespearean ambiguity since background and foreground
create each other.
And for literary folks:
gratitude to Helen Vendler who discovered the “couplet tie” in Shakespeare’s
sonnets, a form of a word which appears in all three quatrains and the couplet. Mine should be easy to spot.
Thanks
to actor Walter Coppage, called by The
Kansas City Star “an actor for all seasons,” for reading the sonnet
—
twice — during
an eclipse observance.
#Candlemas
Candlemas 2018
with debt to Thomas
Traherne (1637?-1674)
Luke 2:22-35
O Angelus of
Light, O candles blest
this night,
require of us your care and trust
as from the
blare and dark worn time we rest,
hushed, warry,
weary; treasures
turned to dust.
O flame,
present us, make us fresh with hope
as to the Temple
Jesus once was brought;
so make our
little flames grow greater scope,
a sign for
Simeon, as he once sought.
Become in us
a burning, ardent fire,
the promised
joy, ambassador of bliss,
a flame
made pure by
holiest desire,
the heart’s
salvation from night’s
bleak
abyss.
The light of
love
is in the hand and heart
as from this sacred
hour we depart.
Hymn for Candlemas
Music: The Third Tune, Thomas Tallis (1505?-1585)
CMD 8686.8686
The sacred is this place and hour for holiness is
here
with in the universal flame as candles now appear
and we awake in faith and grace to find our selves
in all;
expanse of time each moment brings, the infinite
in small.
Each spark becomes a spreading light, a journey’s
star made swift
from cosmic start that made the world transforming
void to gift.
Against the dark, beyond each fear, let us now
find the fire
igniting universal love, the holiest desire.
A Reply to Shakespeare:
Kissing Time
Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate,
That Time will come and take my
love away.
—Shakespeare, Sonnet LXIV
What then is time? If no one asks
me, I know what it is.
If I wish to explain it to him
who asks, I do not know.
—Augustine, Confessions, Book 11
Today we are to speak of the supreme
kiss . . . .
—Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermon 8
Commentary on the Song of Songs
He who kisses the joy as it flies
/ Lives in eternity’s sunrise.*
—William Blake, Eternity
Time
was I could tell what time is, but now
I bump into these cogs of
memories
and desire’s sticky battle
with my vow
to give up vain and craven
reveries.
My shadow on the concrete
sidewalk burns
the time from first I might
have run upright
the African savannah’s dust,
as churns
the genome, twisting that
primordial light.
Yet nighttime when you are
near fears no loss
(though galaxies will swirl,
explode, and crush
our light into a hole, and,
thoughtless, toss
our love’s sweet information
into mush).
The tenses grammar teaches are like graves.
Your kisses are the kilter all time craves.
*He who binds to himself a joy / Does
the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
/ Lives in eternity's sunrise.
The Post-modern Acolytes' Instructions
Now jolt the cup, drag paten to the feast,
for Christ is love and potent in the wine,
and in our blood as in the humble priest
when we admit the fleshy call to dine.
Enjoyment is the sacrificial cup,
to fill and shock, caressing at the rim,
the bread consumed this holy time to sup,
devouring glory crossed in juncture grim.
From nothingness our God the cosmos banged
the horror in the wafer and the drink,
Himself humanity in us he hanged
and showed us splender, not a creed to think.
Table set, sanctified
and made sublime
a marvel purges us and
the worst crime.
Of day and night each week with lines I fill,
or they are filled for me, a rhythm fit
by accident, agreement, even will
of my own to run or speak or just sit.
So seldom, though retired, is time free,
as rimes with "orange" are scant and need a fee
Reincarnation
I don't much buy this rebirth Buddhist crap;
anatma-vada's what the Buddha taught.
not past or coming lives, a selfish trap;
the end of self is what the Buddha sought.
Yet what I do may linger for a while,
my present seed may yeild a future fruit
another may enjoy; my sweat or smile
some later face may wear -- and thus transmute.
Some day this "Vern the Void" shall fade in joy
in thinking I may give a book to you
and something even more you may employ
to help end suffering so large in view.
With friends and fun -- and tragedy -- we're hurled
to make delight and to redeem the world.
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