Against the Wall

Sonnets to M.

I

The only support of men when minds are shaken,

The inner steel meant to face wilder storms,

The plan prepared, the peace well undertaken

And ratified on clear immutable norms-

What if it gave way? where would we be?

Tossed like seaweed beyond the windiest cape,

Or sunk to smother for hours in despair's sea,

Or caught on rolling wheels not to escape?

Oh, let us be contrite now and mark our plans

With alternatives; let us be quiet and wise,

And give all antithetical things a place:

For now the winds are seeking out what is man's,

And pillars are shaken, pillars weak at their base,

Against which men prop only terrified cries.

u

Let me forget forever peace and war,

Burdensome love and taut vehement hate,

The sleepless nights spent staring at the door

To watch the shadow of capricious fate;

To watch and turn and toss and wait for light,

Which had arrived but I could never find,

Being so caught in black reticular night

That I was blind not to believe me blind.

And now that light returns, where shall I go,

Who have so many times been back and forth

And lost those things that quiet men have hailed?

The answer is to like both sun and snow,

And let this mind inhabit South and North,

Until these nerves have hardened where they failed.

ul

Sometimes I think when lovely bodies are gone

And I am companioned by the night's long tide,

I would be pulled and irretrievably drawn

Into the comet-scarred sky torn of my pride,

Torn of my fears and my mad dreams and hopes;

Be blown across the sierras of stars on stars

To some intransigent place like the cold slopes

Of brilliant Saturn or close-drifting Mars.

But still through night I guard my hungry poise,

Hoping only that day will help me find

Those crumbs of knowledge that can prove enough;

Or else to realize what's futile and make a choice

To trick or supplicate before the blind,

Or burn this heart out on candid carnal love.