stonepicnicking_okapi

I am also reading The Penguin Book of the Sonnet: 500 Years of a Classic Tradition in English edited by Phillis Levin. A lot of poets have written sonnets. More than I thought, in fact. Here are two.

Also, of note, is that I had to go through 3 sites before I found an online cut-and-paste-able version of E. E. Cumming's poem that respects the poet's original lack of use of space/punctuation in some spots. His works are ones you can't afford to grammar check! And it irks the poet in me to see it reproduced with such errors because the lack of space after some commas MATTERS!

when though has taken thy last applause,and when by E. E. Cummings

when thou hast taken thy last applause,and when
the final curtain strikes the world away,
leaving to shadowy silence and dismay
that stage which shall not know they smile again,
lingering a little while i see thee then
ponder the tinsel part they let thee play;
i see the large lips livid,the face grey,
and silent smileless eyes of Magdalen.
The lights have laughed their last;without,the street
darkling awaiteth her whose feet have trod
the silly souls of men to golden dust:
she pauses on the lintel of defeat,
her heart breaks in a smile—and she is Lust....

mine also,little painted poem of god

I Shall Come Back by Dorothy Parker

I shall come back without fanfaronade
Of wailing wind and graveyard panoply;
But, trembling, slip from cool Eternity—
A mild and most bewildered little shade.
I shall not make sepulchral midnight raid,
But softly come where I had longed to be
In April twilight’s unsung melody,
And I, not you, shall be the one afraid.

Strange, that from lovely dreamings of the dead
I shall come back to you, who hurt me most.
You may not feel my hand upon your head,
I’ll be so new and inexpert a ghost.
Perhaps you will not know that I am near,—
And that will break my ghostly heart, my dear.