My Sonnet About Sonnets

I bought a copy of this book in 1967. I still have it.

Sonnet Love

 

I love the way its rhythm and its rhymes

provide us with a promise, a belief

familiar voices at specific times

may modulate unmanageable grief.

 

I love the way we’re called to referee

the mind-heart match-up in its scanty ring;

how through it all our only guarantee

is that for fourteen rounds the ropes will sing.

 

I love the way it makes us feel at home,

the way it welcomes fugitives and fools

who have forgotten all roads lead to Rome

from shared beginnings in the tidal pools.

 

Life’s unpredictability defies

clean dénouement. I love the way it tries.

 

 

 

P.S. My favorite sonnet by Millay begins: "Time does not bring relief; you all have lied"