This will be my last post until the New Year. It’s amazing to me how well the sonnet has held up as a form. An example appropriate to the darkness of the season:
Noch Einmal, an Orpheus
When the Queen of Darkness heard his voice,
That mortal stranger, saw him lift the lyre
And watched the dull throng of the dead rejoice
To hear him tell of earth and earth’s desire,
Of pain, of longing, she was not amused.
She caught that veiled allusion to the shame
Of her own story and would have refused
Him then and there, had not the shades that came
In droves now clamored so for his request.
“Be rid of him,” she breathed to the immense
Stillness at her side, who thought it best
To play a cruel joke at the man’s expense,
Fated as he was to indecision,
To second thoughts, a lifetime of revision.