(FROM A THORN OF SONNETS)
On this day of rest we require an emblem
proving the harps and small bells determined
to be released from the phonograph are
transcendental. Each note carries a digression
but God hates imagination more than progress
and identifies seven ways to hang from
the neck. Empires fall, this one, that one.
The heart aches old with earth, dirty, misused
with inventions that modify a flower.
Ultimately what is developed is inseparable
from the original source of pleasure which
we may now call magnetism. The characteristics
echo and echo an affirmation, until we forget
formulas composed to keep us earthbound.
(FROM A THORN OF SONNETS)
Meaning within proof lies likely to deceive
light towards a sexual sense and since
some devices registered as grief turn from
nevertheless to even now implies the setting
in one sense idle like a doubleness unseen
in singularity. It requires remedy unlikely
to bear false witness. This sense of the world
as a physic storm transforms general life
into a state of concealment, a brook flanked
by a willow, locks of hair and pearls
carrying reverberations. More generally,
it was a philosophical joke depending
on the distinction between inner reality
and outward appearance.
(FROM A THORN OF SONNETS)
Passing years, at their most destructive,
have scope enough to contain transformation
by violence. Repair condition, the glass
means mirror. Hours pass and refer to seasons.
To destroy the lovely body threatens
to destroy the family, the house to which
one belongs, and possibly his image.
Not the wax but the stamp that marks it.
But the shock lays less in concretion of rage
than in inversion of violence and consequence.
As barren of purpose as in effect. An object
declares ambition: not to write about beauty.
Scattered feelings grow. In the latter sonnets
implications of this desire are pursued.
