gossamer sleep; or, my ink well's dry

[ruethereal]

Seeing as how it's national poetry writing month, I ought to post something other than commentaries on British literature and fairy tale adaptations. Last year, I entered in The Chronicle of Higher Education poetry contest. The rules were plain and simple: write a poem in any form in response to John Keats's "On first looking into Chapman's Homer":

MUCH have I travell’d in the realms of gold,

And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;

Round many western islands have I been

Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.

Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne;

Yet did I never breathe its pure serene

Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken;

Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

He star’d at the Pacific—and all his men

Look’d at each other with a wild surmise—

Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

A Petrarchan (that is, Italian) sonnet. Of course, I had to go and choose to write a Petrarchan sonnet myself to submit:

Through Muted Night the Quiet Dawn

If only, cleaving voids and heaven, could those eyes

a haven see past cosmic storms' obscurity;

perceive between the far-flung stars lucidity;

receive assurances divine from silent skies.

The jury, robed in thick abyss, unjust, denies

that mortal respite and relief from gravity

nor solitude. For she, in youth's naivety,

could not foresee dead ends untimely, love's goodbyes.

But she, in night's embrace of gossamer sleep, will find:

In dreams, not skyward prayer, can memories endure,

do heartfelt vows with whispering wind become entwined.

Though she may wake, her heart still hesitant, unsure,

the morning's gauzy fingers, radiant, extend

to dry the tears she's shed, that heart to gently mend.

I didn't win, or else that would've been one of the first things I'd say, but I did manage to get an honorable mention of sorts. Besides, Alyson Ark Iott won hands down. Her poem is like a slow burn, and hearing it is even more intense. Read and/or listen to it here.