I LVI

Sonnets pour Helene, I

LVI

Love is no middling thing but an outlier
That will have nothing of these decimals
One wouldn’t cut a friend in half and call
One’s self so perfect without another.
I use all my heart, and would you bother
To do the same: nodal chains of desire
Will never be lost from Time’s recitals
So happy with themselves they are and all

My shadow scares me – and, jealous, I can’t
Have companions, no matter how I want
Or how deeply I find myself in folk

My other friendship’s like some mad children
Playing at fire or at vain prison:
The flame so forged makes only so much smoke

I XXXII 04/11/08 ~02:00

Sonnets pour Helene, I

XXXII

From such a fine angelic light of life
The grand ideal of love and tender trial
Shot glancing softness strips my soul of guile
Taking my naked heart at point of knife

I know no way, no cure and no device
To keep from your time-wasting range, but I’ll
Leave you, should all this last too long a while,
My bodily remains before the mice.

Piercing eyes that are my grace and evil
Heal thy wounds: Achilles might fit the bill
You are so divine, he nothing but man

See, speaking thus, how much my heart demands…
Alas, I am not hurt by the quicksand
But that you live so far beyond its span

II LX

Sonnets pour Helene, II

LX

I am by your love oddly ill
Now deathly cold, now parched with heat
As many pains beat my heart still
As grains in your pomegranate

O eyes that ambushed me at first
Calm my fire; quench my tears
I kid; you can’t – this mighty thirst
Is far too grave for winks’ sly cheers

Trust me, woman, for you I die
I have no nerve or artery
Through which your fever has not blown

Pomegranates are Love’s symbol:
Each grain withholds a mighty soul
With sign and magnitude unknown

II X

Sonnets pour Helene, II

X

God be with fine Cassandra, fair Marie
To whom I gave three years ‘neath Borgueil skies
While one survives, the other passed; her eyes
Are heaven’s light, earth’s maudlin memory

My youthful Spring of passion fast and free
Adored their beauty, but such fierce pride
Would yield to neither tears nor sorrow sighed
So clumsy Fate has been while threading me

Now in the Autumn’s passing lonely still
I act out Spring’s routine of love until
It kills me through hard days of tired pain

And though I’ve long been from this war released
My Colonel drives me with his arrows East
To Ilion, where hides the lost Helayne.

french

I XXIV

Sonnets pour Helene, I

XXIV

I bound your arm in silken knots of rose
The other day, while mentioning the weather
But nothing more of you could I thus capture
Your fancy and your heart escaped the bows

Beauty whom I as my sole mistress chose
The odds are stacked against me, you enrapture
My flesh and spirit like some fairy spectre
Dodging even Love’s bewitching arrows

I may consult an ancient sorceror:
And with his charming magic made to order
You’d feel the same as I do; but God knows
That love is no mere trick for me to conjure

Youth, wealth, charisma, an elegant nose
Enchanted poems can’t compete with those

edited 02/12/08, 10/04/09

I XXXIII

Sonnets pour Helene, I

XXXIII

As we walk, you, my mistress, say to me
A song should hold real feeling: I like best
The ones with fragile love sadly confessed
In sorrowed vocals full of tragedy

And so (you went on) when I’m all at sea
I pick a sonnet where such pain’s expressed;
To pass my nature’s or indeed Love’s test
It needs the right blend of melancholy

Your words are falsehood; if you cared at all
About the hearts that weep to be love’s thrall
I might extend to you some sympathy

But your dissembling eye with practiced style
Cries over my verses, a crocodile
Devouring life in its hypocrisy

french

I XXXV

Sonnets pour Helene, I

XXXV

I always have to deal with thoughts of you
Sustained by sight of your celestial eyes
Twin suns in no less beautiful disguise
Unique to here and now the mirror two

The nightingale impersonates the crow
The rose a thistle; rivers trickle dry
The vines embrace the elm for both to die
And Spring without you is a savage blow

I like to watch the doves this time of year
As beak to beak they kiss with loving care
From happy dawn to fading dusk’s farewell

These pigeons are such lucky Cyprians
By grace or venture they have found and won
A prize I only reach through dreams’ kind spell

french

I XXXIV

Sonnets pour Helene, I

XXXIV

Ten score times a day hold I close again
The orange and pale lemon of your hand
Sweet present loving held at their demand
For immolative proof of heartfelt pain.

But once they kindle, I pour calming rain
Of troubled watering eyes; my anger fanned
By your unthinking treatment of them and
Your cruel laughter as we are insane.

Oranges and lemons are romantic
And muted symbols of a chance to trick
You into being mine, as in the Greek

Hippomenes’ tale, but Love has the cheek
To coat my tired soles in lead and stick
Wings on your feet, you fucking flying freak.

french

I XXXVI written sometime 2006

Sonnets pour Helene, I

XXXVI

I heard it spoken from the window’s shade,
A view upon Montmartre and the field:
The simplest life such solitude can yield
This court be damned, its welcome is outstayed

Now would a mind of sense be master made;
The day of fast and prayer then revealed
From casts and flames of Love provide a shield,
That cruel god’s bloodthirsty hand be stayed

I could not really help but think this wrong,
For fire is still light in ashen heap
And holy cloisters sparkle all night long

In passion both the town and desert sleep;
To fight a force that moves the will so strong
A hunger and devotion are just sheep.

french