Sonnet № 129983
With You at an Ancient Temple
Some places were not meant for love. A shrine
graced with pure roofless marble by the glade,
as the sun lent us a columnar shade,
helped us like rival ivies intertwine.
Tourists flashed in to feel and photograph
the unchanging statues, trying to ignore
the two kids curled like shadows on the floor
unseen by those stone gods. Long since I laugh
in memory of pallid jealousy
they masked behind bold gossip of âWhat is it
with kids today?â with mere stone to admire.
Youâre whatâs with me today, my dear, as we
before the altar of our hearth revisit
that blessèd blasphemy of our desire.
5 comments
But... some archaicky and/or highfalutin talk:
"graced", "lent", "rival ivies", "unchanging", "pallid jealousy", "masked behind bold gossip", "blessed blasphemy" (minus extra for the unnecessary diacritic.)
It's not that I have a problem with highfalutin as such. Lord knows I highfalute as much as anyone. But it's just so... STYLIZED, you know? I mean, what does it mean for a thing to grace you with something? Or who thinks statues are really unchanging anymore? Nothing and nobody, except in the kinda-removed language of old poesie. I doubt even Pope ever felt really GRACED by something in his long damp life. It's just what you say something does when you need to make it do something in a poem. Or it's like trying to write folksy/bluegrass music (which I do a lot). At some point you're not originating, you're just writing what bluegrass is supposed to sound like - the forms. Not art but a museum piece, ya know? -10-
Yeats: "an agèd man is but a paltry thing"
Alastair Reid (in translating a poem by Borges) "Blessèd are those who do not hunger for justice."
"Unchanging" I agree is redundant as is "graced"
As far as accents, I look to Frost, whose more-or-less straight-up rhythmical verse is full of extra and dropped syllables (cf. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood.) I've never had trouble reading Frost's intended rhythm, and I wouldn't stumble on "blessed blashphemy" in a pentameter poem. At best, the grave's unnecessary for modern readers, I think.
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