A Brief History of the Sonnet - Chapter 4 The English Sonnet continued

 We see many inconsistencies, in a sense, in the sonnets of Wyatt. He uses lines that are ten or eleven or twelve syllables in couplets in the same sonnet and his rhyme schemes are not exactly fixed. There is nothing wrong in all this and I only want to point out the fluidity. What I want kept in mind is that he started a literal and literary revolution in the world of English poetry as after him came an innumerable number of sonneteers and sonnets, sonnet sequences and mistresses. Their names drip from my mouth like a poem in itself, like honey, the Earl of Surrey being the first, then Edmund Spenser with his Amoretti, Michael Drayton, Philip Sidney with Astrophel and Stella, William Shakespeare, John Milton, William Wordsworth, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Emily Bronte, D G Rosetti, GM Hopkins, the delectable Henry (Mr Bones) sonnets, Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Pushkin, Vikram Seth, Sonnet Mondal, myself, and in France Rimbaud, and Baudelaire, in Germany Rilke and... and...and...

But let me not rush ahead too fast and break the suspense. Let me start with  Henry Howard who was the Earl of Surrey who died or was rather executed at thirty at Tower Hill, accused of treason and perhaps partly also for being supposedly someone who held on to the Roman Catholic faith who however is a person enshrined in the history of poetry, for first using the Shakespearean sonnet and blank verse or the iambic pentameter without rhyme which was later called Marlowe's "mighty line". As in the case of Guido Cavalcanti who  was probably more an originator of the Petrarchan sonnet than Petrarch or Petrarca himself, in the case of the Shakespearean sonnet too, and the use of iambic pentametre, while Marlowe and Shakespeare stole the thunder coming later and hence being more well versed in it as those before had already ploughed the land, the credit belongs to a great extent to the Earl of Surrey in his sonnets and in the translation of Virgil's Aeneid in that order for the two achievements. "Tottel's Miscellany" which I spoke of earlier as containing Thomas Wyatt's sonnets is actually titled "Songes and Sonettes, Written by the Ryght Honorable Lorde Henry Haward Late Earle of Surrey and Other (1557)".  The Other there is others and  includes Thomas Wyatt

Surrey introduced the rhyme scheme abab cdcd efef gg and used iambic pentametre rhymed for his sonnets setting the stage for some of the best poetry in the world to come from England through the sonnet sequences that came forth then and also the tradition of writing great sonnets. The Britttanica Encyclopedia says that "Surrey achieved a greater smoothness and firmness (than Wyatt), qualities that were to be important in the evolution of the English sonnet."

"The elements of the Wyatt/Surrey sonnet are:

1. a quatorzain, written with a Petrarchan octave followed by an envelope quatrain ending with a rhyming couplet.
2. metric, primarily iambic pentameter.
3. the rhyme scheme...
4. it is composed with the volta... or pivot (a shifting or tilting of the main line of thought) sometime after the 2nd quatrain.
5. distinguished by the declamatory couplet"

The following sonnet of the Earl of Surrey I give not for its merit but it deals with his pain in unjust imprisonment, perhaps referring to his Windsor confinement, perhaps not, and it makes me feel.

"The fancy of a wearier lover by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey

The fancy, which that I have served long,
That hath alway been enemy to mine ease,
Semed of late to rue upon my wrong,
And bade me fly the cause of my misease.
And I forthwith did press out of the throng,
That thought by flight my painfull heart to please
Some other way: til I saw faith more strong:
And to my self I said: alas, those days
In vain were spent, to run the race so long.
And with that thought, I met my guide, that plan
Out of the way wherein I wandered wrong,
Brought me amidst the hills, in base Bullayn:
Where I am now, as restless to remain,
Against my will, full pleased with my pain."

I do not know if I imagine it but I find that in Ode to a Nightingale Keats might have been influenced by Surrey in bringing in "fancy". The idea that fancy is an enemy is the same there too: "Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well. As she is famed to do, deceiving elf."

1. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Henry-Howard-Earl-of-Surrey

2 .http://www.poetrymagnumopus.com/topic/1045-wyattsurrey-sonnet/

A Brief History of the Sonnet - Chapter 3 The English Sonnet's Beginnings

 Chapter 3 - The English Sonnet 1

Everything has to find its way into a place from another through a conduit. In the case of the sonnet, it came to England via Wyatt (not Earp) and Surrey. Thomas Wyatt is the originator of the English sonnet. Though he used Italian models he introduced the sestet with a new rhyme scheme of cdcd ee mostly that was significant as it led to the development of the English sonnet as a variant on the Petrarchan one into three quatrains and a couplet. Influenced by Petrarch, Dante, and others he wanted to raise English to the same level as Italian and other European languages and introduced personal experiences into his poetry. He also wrote of unrequited love but his sonnets could also be satirical. The iambic pentameter was not yet in fashion and Wyatt tried terza rima and ottava rima in English, not to mention the alexandrine ( and the poulter's measure of twelve syllables) and the iambic tetrameter, and the fourteener, as well as many other forms like the Rondeau from France and Italy but his sonnets found their mark and were welcomed hugely to the nation's bosom although he was the bridge and came before the Elizabethan Age and made English poetry for the first time perhaps, under the influence of Chaucer, both readable and clear. He was supposed to have had a love affair with Anne Boleyn - the same one who was Henry VIII's paramour and a brunette put in prison for adultery with five men who were all executed with her except for Wyatt who was one of them, fortunately for him, and the juicy part of this section is he may have seen her being executed from his jail window - and was imprisoned several times but also was an ambassador and man of the court under kings, as well as Cromwell's trusted employee, all of which worked both in his favour and against him; a very interesting life, in short. He became famous through the landmark anthology Tottel's Miscellany, and for his work on Petrarch, letting loose in England a torrent or storm of sonnets thenceforth that created a great set of poems, if ever there was one.

I find no peace and all my war is done,

I fear and hope, I burn and freeze like ice,

I fly above the wind, yet can I not arise,

And nought I have and all the world I seson;

That loseth nor locketh holdeth me in prison;

And holdeth me not; yet can I scape nowise,

Nor letteth me live nor die at my devise,

And yet of death it giveth me occasion.

Without eyen I see; and without tongue I plain:

I desire to perish, and yet I ask health;

I love another: and thus I hate myself;

I feed me in sorrow; and laugh in all my pain:

Likewise displeaseth me both death and life,

And my delight is causer of this strife.

The English comes from the first half of the 16th century so is a bit strange to us and in some parts not fully clear but on the whole it is a delightful sonnet. To make it clear I have tried my hand at making it modern for all of you. But it also arrests our attention as it talks of his prison stints.

I find no peace and all my war is done,

I fear and hope, I burn and freeze like ice,

I fly above the wind, yet can I not arise,

And nought I have and all the world I (seize on);

That losses nor locks hold me in prison;

And holds me not; yet can I escape in nowise,

Nor lets me live nor die at my device,

And yet of death it gives me occasion.

Without eyes I see; and without tongue, I complain:

I desire to perish, and yet I ask health;

I love another: and thus I hate myself;

I feed me in sorrow; and laugh in all my pain:

Alike displeases me both death and life,

And my delight is the cause of this strife.

A delightful sonnet, to repeat, about his "Delight" or mistress/love all in oxymoron with a classic cddc ee ending in terms of rhyme and mostly in iambic lines of ten or eleven or twelve syllables of two lines each. What I mean is in the couplet if the first line has ten syllables the second will too and if the third has eleven the next one will too and if one has twelve the next one will have twelve too. It also arrests us by bringing in the knowledge of how he felt about his prison stints.

I love the history of the sonnet and am indebted to Dante, Cavalcanti, Rafael's lost sonnets for his mistress Margherita, Michaelangelo and Wyatt and many, many others as these chapters will gradually unfold and it would not have been possible for me to come to my own experiments with the form if not for ALL of them.

Wyatt wrote only 31 sonnets and ten are more or less translations from Petrarch, if I remember rightly, which was his tribute to the master, but the mark he left is deep and still felt even in Kerala from which it will spread again to India and the world due to some key Indian sonneteers ending with me, as of now.

http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/Archive/Wyatt2.htm

A Brief History of the Sonnet - Chapter 2

 A Brief History of the Sonnet.

Chapter 2 - Dante, Cavalcanti, Michaelangelo and the terza rima sonnet. (All rights reserved by Dr Koshy AV)

Petrarch's father knew Dante Alighieri. This is not fortuitous. Before we talk of the Petrarchan sonnet, we need to talk of two seminal figures, Dante Alighieri and Guido Cavacanti, and the terza rima sonnet and Cavalcanti's contribution to the Petrarchan sonnets. And as a bonus, I want to toss in something on Michaelangelo Buonarotti for all of you, my dear readers.

But first the terza rima sonnet. Like the Petrarchan one it has 14 lines but the stanzas go in threes except for the last one which only has two and the rhyme scheme is interlocking with an aba, bcb, cdc, ded, ee pattern so the very last line of the sonnet and/or the series (of sonnets) written in terza rima has to rhyme with the middle line of the previous tercet (three lines). Terza refers to the stanzaic form and rima to the fact that it has to rhyme. Its originator was Dante and he used it in the Divine Comedy and it swept the world. I would like to give an example from one of the most famous poems in the Western world, by PB Shelley "Ode to the West Wind." When western poets used this form they naturally tended to write it in iambic pentametre, meaning lines having five feet or ten syllables, and going da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM, to keep the beat or the metronome too intact, not to mention stressed-unstressed &/or accented-unaccented, being Shakespearean and Elizabethan in this matter.

I am not going to quote Dante as it brings in Italian and people do not read that and instead read the translation and get confused as the appearance changes as in translation into English the syllables become less. But Shelley is ideal in both his mastery of the ode and the terza rima as well as in his mastery of sound and all the tropes of poetry.

I

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being, - a

Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead -b

Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, -a

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, -b

Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou, -c

Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed -b

The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, -c

Each like a corpse within its grave, until -d

Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow -c

Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill -d

(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) - e

With living hues and odours plain and hill: -d

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; - e

Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear! -e

I don't know how many people realize or know that the power of the poem "Ode to the West Wind" stems from it being five terza rima sonnets in iambic pentametre. While his ear for metre is impeccable, so is his eye for rhyme though he uses a couple of slant rhymes with 'thou' and 'where', to fulfil his purpose. Nowadays people speak of free verse, and imagery and figures of speech simply to hide their paucity in mastering sound devices, genre, structure and form and depths of meaning, but it is excusable to not write in metre only if one is not a native speaker. It does not make it right for them to not find it laudable when done exquisitely in the names of silly literary theories like decolonization.

Another poet who needs to be seen as a forerunner of the Petrarchan sonnet is Guido Cavalcanti.

"Guido Cavalcanti, was born in 1255, in Florence [Italy and died on Aug. 27/28, 1300, Florence), Italian poet, a major figure among the Florentine poets who wrote in the dolce stil nuovo (“sweet new style”) and who is considered, next to Dante, the most striking poet and personality in 13th-century Italian literature.

Born into an influential Florentine family of the Guelf (papal) party, Guido Cavalcanti studied under the philosopher and scholar Brunetto Latini, who earlier had been the teacher of Dante. Cavalcanti married the daughter of the rival Ghibelline (imperial) party leader Farinata degli Uberti but joined the White Guelf faction when, in 1300, that party split into Blacks and Whites. That same year, Dante, who had dedicated several poems to Cavalcanti and called him his “first friend,” apparently was involved in banishing Cavalcanti from Florence. In exile in Sarzana, Cavalcanti contracted malaria and was permitted to return to Florence, where he died.

Cavalcanti’s strong, temperamental, and brilliant personality and the poems that mirror it were admired by many contemporary poets and such important later ones as Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Ezra Pound. He left about 50 poems, many addressed to two women: Mandetta, whom he met in Toulouse in 1292, and Giovanna, whom he calls Primavera (“Springtime”). Cavalcanti’s poems glow with the brilliance, grace, and directness of diction characteristic of the "dolce stil nuovo (sweet new style)" at its best. Love is the poet’s dominant theme, generally love that causes deep suffering.

Two of Cavalcanti’s poems are canzoni, a type of lyric derived from Provençal poetry, of which the most famous is “Donna mi prega” (“A Lady Asks Me”), a beautiful and complex philosophical analysis of love, the subject of many later commentaries. Others are sonnets and ballate (ballads), the latter type usually considered his best.

...Cavalcanti’s poetry was first collected in 1527 and later in Le rime de Guido Cavalcanti (1902). Many poems were translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti in The Early Italian Poets (1861; later retitled Dante and His Circle) and by Ezra Pound in The Sonnets and Ballate of Guido Cavalcanti (1912)."

Here is his best sonnet according to some - and here we find the Petrarchan sonnet already nascent or ab ovo, there in essence even before Petrarch/Petrarca, though with variations in the rhyme scheme. Rosetti has cast it in iambic pentametre.

Who is she coming, whom all gaze upon (Cavalcanti)

(Translated by D.G. Rossetti)

Who is she coming, whom all gaze upon, - a

Who makes the air all tremulous with light, - b

And at whose side is Love himself? that none - c

Dare speak, but each man’s sighs are infinite. -b

Ah me! how she looks round from left to right, - b

Let Love discourse: I may not speak thereon. - a

Lady she seems of such high benison -c

As makes all others graceless in men’s sight. -b

The honour which is hers cannot be said; -d

To whom are subject all things virtuous, -e

While all things beauteous own her deity. -f

Ne’er was the mind of man so nobly led, -d

Nor yet was such redemption granted us -e

That we should ever know her perfectly. f

Here we see that it is still a continuous flow but the stanzas are demarcated by the change in rhyme scheme, as usual, so it is an octave and sestet. Cavalcanti's lady is very much an idealized figure, seat of all virtues and so a bit boring like Beatrice, but his poetry is lovable and for those interested in gossip her name was Mandetta or Giovanna, or both. She is plural!

Last, but not least, my personal favourite Michael Angelo Buonarotti of whose sonnets there is a copy in Thiruvananthapuram Public Library that my eldest brother brought home. Most of the best things in my life came through him. I read it enchanted as they were exquisite love poems, and later found out to my surprise that they were probably for Tomasso Cavallieri, as he was gay. I loved them and still do, the sonnets: as they remind me of these lines by Robert Browning from "One Word More," his preface to his famous Fifty Men and Women, that made the dramatic monologue the form the Victorian Age's poetry would be remembered by.

"This: no artist lives and loves that longs not

Once, and only once, and for One only, 60

(Ah, the prize!) to find his love a language

Fit and fair and simple and sufficient—

Using nature that’s an art to others,

Not, this one time, art that’s turn’d his nature.

Ay, of all the artists living, loving, 65

None but would forego his proper dowry,—

Does he paint? he fain would write a poem,—

Does he write? he fain would paint a picture,

Put to proof art alien to the artist’s,

Once, and only once, and for One only, 70

So to be the man and leave the artist,

Save the man’s joy, miss the artist’s sorrow."

To return to Michael Angelo, all know his paintings (the Sistine chapel) and sculptures (Moses, David, the Pieta) but few know his poetry so let me close this chapter with his exquisite sonnet of his that is famous called The Silkworm

D' altrui pietoso.

Kind to the world, but to itself unkind, - a

A worm is born, that dying noiselessly -b

Despoils itself to clothe fair limbs, and be -b

In its true worth by death alone divined. - a

Oh, would that I might die, for her to find - a

Raiment in my outworn mortality! -b

That, changing like the snake, I might be free -b

To cast the slough wherein I dwell confined! -a

Nay, were it mine, that shaggy fleece that stays, c

Woven and wrought into a vestment fair, -d

Around her beauteous bosom in such bliss! -e

All through the day she'd clasp me! Would I were -d

The shoes that bear her burden! When the ways - c

Were wet with rain, her feet I then should kiss! -e

And yes, it is a Petrarchan sonnet! (translated by J Aldington Symonds)

(https://allpoetry.com/Xxi.-_the-silkworm._)

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Guido-Cavalcanti

https://www.poetryimmortal.com/who-is-she-coming/

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45134/ode-to-the-west-wind

https://genius.com/Robert-browning-one-word-more-annotated

A Brief History of the Sonnet as a Form or All you ever wanted to know about it but were always afraid to ask. (All rights to this book reserved by Dr Koshy AV) Chapter 1 - Petrarca

 A Brief History of the Sonnet you wanted to know all about but were always afraid to ask. (All rights to this book reserved by Dr Koshy AV)

Chapter 1 - Petrarca

The reviving interest in forms and in the sonnet has made me decide to write a short book on it.

As usual, it will be peppered with poets and examples, and my own idiosyncratic views in my own inimitable style, of all of them, the poets, and them, the examples.

The sonnet as you all know or don't, started in Italy. My interest in it is due to a simple fact, the person who is said by some to have started it, the one you can call its "father" if you want to, or Petrarch, won my approval not so much by the form alone, but by doing a sequence as well as writing all of them about a woman called Laura and dedicating it to her thereby. You may call it the human interest angle. Here is a poet, and a muse, and a muse who was inspiring enough to make the poet write a whole series of poems in a particular form that would make him, her, and the form immortal. Stuff of legends and fiction, don't you all think? Imagine how beautiful Laura must have been. Just imagine!

As a matter of fact, the Petrarchan sonnet was not invented by Petrarch but evolved by many Renaissance poets and codified or rather 'rigidified', if you will let me use such a word, into 14 lines with an octave and sestet, or if that is too technical for you into two stanzas of eight and six lines respectively. The rhyme scheme was slightly flexible in the last six lines but always abba abba in the first eight, but generally, the next six followed patterns like cde cde or ab ab cc and all that. The theme was usually Love, woman, women, sex, romance, courtly and otherwise, pastoral or bucolic, as often it is, when it starts out, or started out, as a light form, but there was really no such injunction or order that the sonnet should be any such thing only.

To return to Petrarch and Laura, like Dante and Beatrice, the author of the Canzonieri only saw her once, perhaps when she was hardly 15, but wrote poems to her all his life, though she herself died in her thirties, perhaps of the bubonic plague. It is a tale of unrequited love! The man credited with starting the R/renaissance, at least of Italy, the first tourist, Latin expert, Cicero's translator etcetera, was so madly in love that he kept writing love songs to Laura all his life though she was wedded and bedded by someone else and had that man's children. Petrarch never even got the chance to wine her and dine her, let alone wed or bed her. We remember him finally not for being the friend of Boccaccio or other things like his Dad knowing Dante, although obviously these things matter in showing us why he too wanted to write poetry and excel at it, but for his impassioned love sonnets to Laura whom he met and who passed away in the first half of the 14th century. He saw her in a church on Easter in 1327 and strangely enough, she died on a Good Friday in 1348. Just 38 years old. He was haunted by her beauty and his best sonnets are the dark ones after her death.

Gli occhi di ch’io parlai sì caldamente,

E le braccia e le mani e i piedi e ’l viso

Che m’avean sì da me stesso diviso

E fatto singular dall’altra gente;

Le crespe chiome d’or puro lucente,

E ’l lampeggiar dell’angelico riso

Che solean far in terra un paradiso,

Poca polvere son, che nulla sente.

Ed io pur vivo; onde mi doglio e sdegno,

Rimaso senza ’l lume ch’amai tanto,

In gran fortuna e ’n disarmato legno.

Or sia qui fine al mio amoroso canto:

Secca è la vena dell’usato ingegno,

E la cetera mia rivolta in pianto.

Those eyes, ’neath which my passionate rapture rose,

The arms, hands, feet, the beauty that erewhile

Could my own soul from its own self beguile,

And in a separate world of dreams enclose,

The hair’s bright tresses, full of golden glows,

And the soft lightning of the angelic smile

That changed this earth to some celestial isle,—

Are now but dust, poor dust, that nothing knows.

And yet I live! Myself I grieve and scorn,

Left dark without the light I loved in vain,

Adrift in tempest on a bark forlorn;

Dead is the source of all my amorous strain,

Dry is the channel of my thoughts outworn,

And my sad harp can sound but notes of pain.

Translated by Thomas Wentworth Higginson.

Note the use of iambic petametre in the English version with ten syllables. Petrarch used many more, at least fourteen or fifteen in each line. Note also how Petrarch uses only one rhyme for the entire last six lines. But note, most of all, the pathos and melancholy of his poem for a woman he had seen only once in his life, a phenomenon we can no longer understand or grasp but only marvel at! Maybe, in some cases, it was only adhering to a convention but not in Petrarch's, and in that of many other poets like Dante and many others I will talk of later which is what makes it intriguing to a twenty-first-century sonneteer like who I am.

In this case, you can see that the first eight lines (octave) of the sonnet deal with Petrarch's thought/s on Laura and then his thoughts on himself mourning her in the next six lines (sestet). The division is made evident in the rhyme scheme, even if typed out just as 14 lines, as it is in some places. The stanzas have been demarcated by me for greater ease and clarity for the reader.

Sources: 1. https://www.artlovingitaly.com/petrarco-petrarch-sonnets-laura-infatuation-unrequited-love/ for the life/lives)

2. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/50307/50307-h/50307-h.htm (for the poem in Italian and its translation)

The Beauty of Black and White

An Angry Roseate sonnet

An angry roseate sonnet

Those who say
All lives matter
You b*********
You b*******

Where were you, in our land
When Muslims, Dalits and tribals died or were raped?
Where are you
When migrant labourers now die?

You effers
You a********

Rattlesnakes, what about our own Floyds
O woe to the hypocrites and leeches
Saying you can/'t breathe, when they can't
Even your time will come to an end

Prompt 25 A Window Story

I have used 13 lines, a half-line, and a phrase lines from Tennyson to rewrite a story that I felt should have been, long ago. My words are the frame and Tennyson's lines are what you see when you look out through that window.

Part 1

The mirror cracked but the lady of Shalott

Did not die, she rose anon

She walked to the window and leaned out

Passing by was the bold Sir Lancelot

Part 2

"She made three paces thro' the room

....

She saw the helmet and the plume,

She look'd down to Camelot"

His broad clear brow in sunlight glow'd;

From underneath his helmet flow'd

His coal-black curls as on he rode,

.... down from Camelot."

....

She saw him from her window there

"'Tirra lirra, tirra lirra:'

Sang Sir Lancelot."

"...Lancelot mused a little space

He said, "she has a lovely face.

'God in His mercy' has 'lent her grace'

The Lady of Shalott"

Part 3

She waved at him as he went by

In her hand, a wisp of lace

Sir Lancelot slowed down his steed's pace

The extent of her interest to trace

Her body leaned out from the arch

He could see her to the waist

Her cheek was pink, her blush no waste

Upon the air it fell, so chaste

'What' chivalrous 'heart could' her 'despise'?

He blew her a kiss, that softly fell

She felt, upon her bosom's cleft

"A sight to dream of, not to tell"

"I wish I was that window, fair

Maiden of this town," he cried

"I would have thee ever led

To lean on it and thus be wed

To a picture, fair as a dream

Ever, thy black hair fluttering."

She who had just escaped her dread weaving

Felt alarmed, was there no escaping

Up the stairs came Sir Lancelot

Behind her, as she looked down

From her sight, he had gone

His arms embraced the maid lovelorn

Forlorn for all these many years

Weaving her web, watching in the mirror her tears

His plume tickled her neck and removed her fears

She turned back from the window's frames.

Part 4

He gave her wings, she learned to fly

Far into the distant sky, through the window of delight

Away from the mirror, and bold Sir Lancelot
Away from the town of Camelot

The Lady of Shalott.



(References also to Gray and Coleridge.)

Prompt 23 Mirror (given by Lopa Banerjee)

PROUD TO BE ALL WOMAN

She stands before it

She lets her clothes fall

She lets her hair loose

Rich clusters of black snakes

Tumble down, open

Her shoulders are shapely

Her skin glows in the light

She hefts her bust to hold it straight

Her hands go to her thighs

She turns sidewards to see herself

Her back, her bum, her legs

The clothes lie in a heap from which

Out peep her two soft feet

She is altogether petite

She is altogether strange

Her eyes look back at her, smiling

She is a ripe orange

She stands there, moving now and then

She is her own star

She is her own universe

The moon, the earth, green grass

Spellbound by her self

She forgets all her cares

She loves herself just as she is

Naked as a child

She wonders at the power

That created her

She wonders at her own power

Pulsing at her sight

Not in her reflection

But in her flesh and bones

That is mutely echoed

By that silver door

That is there in front of her

She caresses her self

For one last time, and she sighs

Then stoops to pick up her clothes

Even then she is smiling

Watching in the mirror

Her cleavage and her fruit-like paps

When suddenly, dark falls

Then all she sees is a glimmer

A glimmer and a shimmer

All she sees is her beauty

Veiled, in the mirror again

In the light of the dark

In the shining night

There is no single stutter

Nothing in her falters

When the dark swallows her

She is still whole

She is always whole

Donatello - 3

22 Prompt - 4th offering - with Sunita Singh

Donatello

Donatella

Was she the one on whom you played cello

The woodwind whom you

Destroyed with voodoo

And regretting, made this

sculpture of her

a gesture of true

repentance at

what you had wrought

that would get you to hell

Donatella

Donatella

Donatello?

On Donatello's Mary Magdalene - 2

Prompt 22 - Second offering - with Sunita Singh THIS IS PENITENT ME That is not Mary of Magdalene. That is Donatello himself revealing his inner state of terror where there is neither male or female but only this febrile despair at one's complicity in the sins of the world and the self-wrought suffering with the art to make it possible to delineate it The angst, the horror, the torture the grief, the endless pain!

For the daily wage workers -an elegy

Prompt 22 - Third offering - Sunita Singh's prompt, done with poetic license. The sculptor is Bruno Catalano.

WHEN THEY NO LONGER GAVE US THAT DAY ON OUR DAILY WAGES

We set out from Karnataka

to reach Maharashtra

but died on the way

in the time of the corona virus

me, my wife and daughter

Years later

they made us this memorial

and to make it look better

gave us nice shoes

and fancy bags

& my wife, a shirt and pant

The truth was much less attractive

but one thing remains intact

the way we vanished

bit by bit

till all that remained

was my daughter's feet

my wife's right side

and last of all my head

The Sea at Marine Drive

mutely watches now

the memory

of us three

who died while going back

to a hovel that we had

but were never meant to reach.

April 22 TSL Prompt Write on Donatello's Mary Magdalene

Hear my cry

Hear my cry, O Lord

Attend unto my prayer

I came from Magdala, a city a bit far

to Capernaum, where the lilies grow

By mischance, I fell into the hands of a rogue

who took my virginity, promising marriage

and then, sold me for a whore to a brothel

where I was made

to sink into the pits of all debauchery

Men came and did to me all they wanted

to, in their perverted minds

and my heart

dark grew, I cursed them

You know one such as I

feels that she is to blame for their acts

for permitting it, for some bread, and some wine

to bring forgetfulness, as to what they the next day will do to you

I have lost all

and am lost now

lost my beauty, youth, lost everything to men

They say I am possessed and oft I fly into a rage

and no one can control me

then weep like one demented

Then I become depressed and speak no word

but after a while they come and rape me again, shamefully

Lost and wretched, I tried oft to end my life

but they keep me alive for their filthy profit, vile

I heard tell of thee, Rabbi, that you are one

who accepts all

the sinner and the damned

so I have come

with nothing in my hands

to give to thee my all

with nothing but these pangs

Will you also turn away

or are you also bad?

I stand before thee, frightening

to look at, that I know

but you do not know how frightened

I am that you will go

You also will leave me

You are my last hope

They speak of me with dread

They speak of you with hate

We are well met

Don't go, reach out, touch me,

forgive me, make me feel

at least once a human

as when I was a child, again

heal me, and I will follow thee

Though all men forsake thee

I will not, I am a woman

I will be your shadow

And in it, you will gain

the strength you've never known

I know you are the one

who will become more than most

If you will take me in

I will be found, no longer lost

Prompts day 21 TSL April 21, Prayer, Friendship (Given by Satbir Chadha)

Prayer is silence
God is Silence

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Friendship

I wandered through the desert, the hot sand burning my feet, in search of a friend.

I wandered through a garden full of the fragrance of roses and jasmine in search of a friend.

I wandered through a world of hail, snow and blinding winds in search of a friend.

The dust cut into my brown skin and red blood came out in drops in my search for a friend.

I flew far beyond the seven hills and four directions even to the skies, the yellow moon, the white sun, and the silver stars, in my search for a friend

I crossed the Himalayas and the Ganges and went far beyond all the blue oceans in my search for a friend.

I looked inside caves, I looked inside caverns, I looked into tunnels and gorges of darkness in search of a friend.
I have been to the poles and seen ice stalactites and stalagmites in my search for a friend.

I fell in love in search of a friend and fell out of love in search of a friend, thinking that friendship was the softness of touch, of taste, of fragrance, of kisses, of embracing hands.

I climbed mountains and crossed valleys, I walked plains and I went past villages, towns, and cities in my search for a genuine friend.

The ivy hung over the fence, the wisteria climbed the walls, time went by like life and death came closer while I still found no friend. I was no closer to finding a real, true friend.

Till one day I realized I would never find a friend, the only friend of the friendless is God and he teaches me to be the friend, everyone's friend, and never to look for any friend.