Sonnets - Tumblr Posts
no one asked AT ALL but here are my favourite queer poems
six fragments for atthis - sappho
fragment 31 - sappho
endymion - oscar wilde
a glimpse - walt whitman
we two boys together clinging - walt whitman
funeral blues - w.h. auden
lullaby - w.h. auden
the more loving one - w.h. auden
sonnet 20 - william shakespeare
sonnet 53 - william shakespeare
sonnet 108 - william shakespeare
thank you for your time happy reading
April 23rd.
Birth and Death Day of William Shakespeare (1564-1616).
The Bard of Avon and bain to O Level, GCSE, A Level and University students down the years.
"If he writes her a few sonnets, he loves her. If he writes her 300 sonnets, he loves sonnets"
- my english professor
Sonnets 1-3
Here you go, Deepayan and Kai – thanks for your kind words. These are from a longer narrative collection of sonnets called "The Storyville Fish and the Prince of Cats," a love story.
***
1
Deep in the lurid dark of New Orleans,
Its streets awash with tar and summer sweat,
An old composer rose from halfway dreams,
Awoken by the sound of a cornet.
He peered out into the lonely streets,
Discovering he no longer knew his town—
Once French provincial homes with drooping eaves
Now shotgun tenements of ill-renown.
Down on the corner beneath a lamppost
A coal-wagon boy relaxed on the curb
Where he played a long note, low and morose—
The saddest sound the old man ever heard.
“That’s just the way the music’s gone,” he said,
Fed his fish, fell asleep, died in his bed.
2
The movers arrived the following day
At the Karnofsky family’s front door.
They said, “The last great maestro passed away
Leaving you everything he had, no more.”
“The fish and its bowl aren’t worth a lot,
But the piano, it’s quite a treasure.”
Mrs. Karnofsky agreed with a nod
And invited the movers to enter.
They set the piano down in the hall
And then they handed the fishbowl over.
Left by herself to consider it all,
Mrs. Karnofsky searched for some closure.
“Grandfather didn’t have much in the end,
But for me, his piano and his friend.”
3
The Storyville Fish heard her think out loud,
And was amazed she had been called a friend.
Unsure whether to feel humbled or proud,
She found she simply could not comprehend.
“Old man lived alone
Heart bursting of things unsaid
Fish lived alone too.”
Thus pacified, the fish turned on her tail
And traveled round and around her glass room.
She never tired swimming the same trail
For it was the path of the sun and the moon.
This home was not much different than the last,
She thought, brushing a fin against the glass.
Don’t be afraid to suffer—take your heaviness /and give it back to the earth’s own weight; / the mountains are heavy, the oceans are heavy.
Rainer Maria Rilke, from The Poetry of Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus (via bookmania)