Another day with nothing to write about,
As usual my thoughts return to you.
Particularly when you and I crouched
Among the train of ducklings passing through.
I can't describe the exhilaration
When they huddle around your legs and mine,
Mobbing us with zero hesitation,
Cheekily playing with your shoelace twine.
I adore the gentle way you observe
These sacred offspring in their merriment;
The awe and affection duly deserved
For those precious puffs of life Heaven sent.
The love they show us makes my spirit soar,
And your love of them makes me love you more.
Category: Sonnet
Hyacinthus and Apollo XV
The god of music heard my fervent prayers, More beautiful than any man he looked; I dared not want him yet like needing air, I still besought him while my body shook. Let all take note that who attempts is glad, For when I asked of him he asked the same. And then he said, ah here's my handsome lad, He held my cheek and sweetly asked my name. I begged him to unlock the secret song. He bade me stand and took me in his arms, And instantly to him did I belong For more than songs and divination charms. Is this the thought upon the godly brow That though eternal thinks of only now?
Hyacinthus and Apollo XIV
Your gleaming limbs beneath the streaming light Entice all beauty lovers with their shape, Yet I alone most wondrous of delights Have known—their tender fingers on my nape; Your precious abdomen and milk-white thighs That wrap around my circuitous embrace; Your feet that bring you when you hear my sighs; Your lips on mine, my arms around your waist; The melting timbre of your singing voice; The intimacy of your whispering; With these alone a lover would rejoice. But more, much more than one could sweetly sing, More cherished than the blind could ever see Is this my lot, that you have chosen me.
Hyacinthus and Apollo XIII; Zephyrus III
He loved and lost and left for foreign lands Away from olive branch and temperate bay, Where what was known were climate's cold demands And frost instead of dew proclaimed the day. Around the Earth his refuge lay; the air That gusts upon his tear-stained cheeks ripostes In slicing curls. In perilous despair He flies alone towards the snowcaps' gloss. When Autumn clasped around the one who spurned Him, Zephyr crossed beyond meridians, Equator, spheres and hemispheres; he turned To gentle Spring the sleeping hinterlands. But soon the wind returns again and sips The bitterness of absence on his lips.
Hyacinthus and Apollo XII
A dry and dusty desert now is he With no oases for his parched dismay; His still effulgence matched in irony By flowering winds making him this way. What thrives in Spring and fashions growth must go The way of everything in transience. What breathes and dances in its vigor slows To feed each beast and bower standing hence. But science never soothes a tragedy; Philosophy he has, which doesn't heal; Divine life now unravels emptily; A god without a godhead: what he feels. For though a life is short, a god be whole, Beside both life and death are lovers' souls.
Hyacinthus and Apollo XI
Ye gods that see the mortals' suffering Your own delivered to that fate laments. His deathless blood an offering His cries He'd make, his golden hair he's rent. Incised. The cosmic dreaming gods He sleeps now in Take shape in enervates The Stygian. In Physics' nightmare; Phoebus casts the rod Upon the ground and dashes it in hate. Yet healing arts he holds not culpable, These too he made as surely as the quoit. As well the Sun in seasons pulls His hand: The whipping winds adroit. Dread operand. He drinks the bitter blame himself, The petals blue-on-white as delft.
Hyacinthus and Apollo X
In Winter when the night is wan and cold, And evening shadows early on the brim Of the horizon's nose, the dream is sold; Enubilated purple drawn so slim. The lips of midnight purse and draw a belt Of transpositions all across the sky. Beneath immortal constellations pelt The waves of worldliness where no souls lie. You turgid cosmos, where is what I've lost? In novel spawning maws or in the old Forgotten corners where the mourners cross In Winter when the night is wan and cold? If every speck eternity contains Remains, then when will he come home again?
Hyacinthus and Apollo IX
So, so unlike the petals were his hair; His tresses gamboled as no iris did, Those lesser beauties of the name they share, No treasure like his face their veils have hid. His locks the deepest midnight color shone, And sunbeams would dislodge a golden crown No orchid wears, it was for him alone; And when they're kissed they make a different sound. The nodding sway of violets in a breeze Is not the way it bobbed when we would play. A larkspur, when I kiss it, doesn't cleave And cling upon my cheeks on humid days. But larkspurs now are all I have to keep; A larkspur and the anodyne of sleep.
Hyacinthus and Apollo VIII; Zephyrus II
Though you yourself seem deathless and divine, Like all things–fleeting–you, the wind, allay. What wonder then that you were undefined? A passing season in another's day. I saw you with him, ancient evidence, And who would not be jealous should they lose That beauty of surpassing eminence? But you were not the one that he would choose. And then, we have no clue of where you went. Why should we when your nature is to turn, To change, to bring to life the soil's intent, Then dissipate when Summer comes to burn. You evanescently immortal one, Outliving us, you fly when Spring is done.
Hyacinthus and Apollo VII; Zephyrus
The Western wind had loved the Spartan prince. He used to course throughout his curly hair, And had been once enjoyed by Hyacinth; But his true love would be Apollo fair. You whistler of the Spring, your loss is great, Beloved for your breeze that clothes the plains. Alas that Love should deign another fate, And shine the brightest light upon your pain. Your coming sprouts the many crops and fruits, But you would have one flower if you could– That rarest blossom for your want acute– Instead it's with the Sun god that he stood. And off they ran to Summer when he shined, In deeply-nighted Winter they reclined.