Two Sonnets

                          I.

I spied a girl in deep concentration
Whose very heart the stone she sat upon
Kept 'til daybreak her own fascination
And followed where a mirror could be drawn.
Her life was hidden in a bloody vessel
The rim of which its contents could not hold
And which the age of leisure could not lessen
Entrance of death in the night of her soul.
Her body fades away of clear distinction,
And sight and sound and light they all converge:
For light's sake the memory extinction;
For light's sake the power and the purge.
     Her body and her heritage have flown;
     She sailed over the valley on a stone.

                         II.

When all is said and done we sit
Like stoic pictures on the wall,
When every line is carefully writ
Lest we lose our course and fall,
Digest we fragments of the truth,
We, the dark-encountering clan
Spew our matters toward the sooth,
The celebrated birth of man.
We do not fear the awful cost,
(Like fools we hold a beggar's cup)
And covet thus the minor loss
Of time and words and death's triumph.
      Of darker poets still ye see
      They do infect the air we breathe!

                      (1980)

Paintings by Edvard Munch: A Nude and Moonlight on the Shore