no place for help I have left to invade.
Still haunted by the cycle of the moon
or love-sick poet’s sonnet, sad and sweet.
My lonely anguish melts no heart but mine.
Though spent thy flame, in me the heat remaining
pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free.
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
and cones of her eyes gave the world a new birth;
it seemed I stared at them, they at me.
She is a procession no one can follow after
without a trace of grace or of offense.
Her coming forth; this chiefly I recall–
nothing else mattered: the world stood still.
Note
Line one from “Necrophiliac” by Rosanna Warren. Line two is from Pamphilia to Amphilanthus 46 by Lady Mary Wroth. Line three is from “The Morning Moon” by Derek Walcott. Line four is from “To A Goose” by Robert Southey Line five is from Delia 38 by Samuel Daniel. Line six is from “On The Death of Mr. Richard West” by Thomas Gray. Line seven is from “London, 1802” by William Wordsworth. Line eight is from “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Line nine is from Mythologies 3 by A. K. Ramanujan. Line ten is from “Funeral Music” 7 by Geoffrey Hill. Line eleven is from “To My Mother” by George Barker. Line twelve is from The Children of The poor I by Gwendolyn Brooks. Line thirteen is from “Double Sonnet” by Anthony Hecht. Line fourteen is from “Party Dress for a First Born” by Rita Dove.