(CVII) ~Ruthless Reprise*

(Three Sonnets Linger)

(1)

Since beings must exist in time and space

Nothing we do might show to alter time

We are best served to willingly embrace

All which we muster make to prim our prime

From gross ridiculous to pure sublime:

Best brave more life into your shifty years

Than grieve upon years gone on life’s arrears!!!

(2)

Time, well known as one vast continuum

Unaltered by its myriad shifting sands

Unfettered, nor caring of decorum

All-giving yet frugal of stern demands

Nor heedful of the whims the heart commands:

Nor waste, nor save for future to redeem

Serves verdict for each trespass to condemn!!

(3)

The eves and flows most bards make us believe

To occur in the fleeting Tide of Time

Are sparks of reverie poets receive

As gratis gifts dreamed from the Muse’s chime

To weave the fabric of cadence with rhyme:

Soar free on wings of imagination

Push envelopes of the soul’s creation.

(4)

We sojourn through paths with junctions replete

Each path we take demands discard the rest

Never shall that selfsame juncture repeat

Should picked path prove to be, or not the best:

Events are ordained irreversible

Despite beliefs all things are possible.

(5)

Famed Ruins that Spenser** waxed loquacious on

Were not by wrath of ruthless time begot

But by natural deterioration

Inherent to the elemental knot

Losing strength, turning to amorphous rot:

Devoid of any witting intentions

Sans charity, sans malicious passions.

(6)

How then Khayyam would attributes impute

In none but twins of hundred-one quatrains***

First as bird with wings, next as host confute

Conflicting views that mortify the brains

Ere lost in cadence of furtive refrains:

Hence feign acquit by licensed poetry

Mere mortals’ trespass on posterity!!

==|==

*With the headline blurb, “2SuzettePortesSanJose 4TimeUntold” the first seven lines got drafted as a casual rejoinder to a poem and photo entitled “Time Untold” posted on the Facebook page of Suzette Portes San Jose. I worked it up to a full sonnet to foster its own copyright protection. Four more stanzas were since added to the opus, effectively losing its stature/status as a sonnet but may pass as a multiple sonnets.

**Cf., The Ruins of Time at http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~rbear/ruines.html

***Cf., The Rubaiyat (VII, XXII) at http://classics.mit.edu/Khayyam/rubaiyat.html