Three New Sonnets

Hello friends,

Three brand new sonnets this week! All in iambic pentameter, but each with its own additional constraint.

Also news that my book KNIT INK (AND OTHER POEMS) is now officially published in the UK — so you can buy it from all the usual venues (Amazon.co.uk, etc.). This omnibus edition features 364 pages of constrained, formal, and visual poetry, written over a decade. Check it out here.

This first sonnet is about Wroxeter, in my home county Shropshire. Wroxeter is home to Viroconium Cornoviorum, once the most important Roman settlement in Britain (photo below poem). This sonnet follows the rhyme scheme of Shelley’s Ozymandias, and begins and ends with the same words as Shelley’s sonnet.

VIROCONIUM CORNOVIORUM

I met your broken bones today, my kin,
so weak inside the Wrekin’s timeless haze,
which witnessed, once, your savvy and your sin:
the werewolf, howling vows, with eyes ablaze;
the emerald of an Empire, forged within
your Celtic fire. I trod the tender green
once paved with ochre stone and gravelled mud
where legions struck their lances. Now serene,
a solitary wall stands tall, defaced
by time and Saxon axes; rain and blood —
the embers of an Empire. Now retraced,
your broken bones engrave the plains today,
unearthed beneath the verdant work of waste.
I stand beside the wall, so far away.

This second sonnet, about the Ulfberht Sword, follows the Shakespearean scheme. Moreover, it uses only the 12 letters in its title: u, l, f, b, e, r, h, t, s, w, o, and d.

ULFBERHT SWORDS

Where brotherhoods of bluebells flower red,
the feeble bleed to blows of frosted swords
whose lustre hews the world — our future wed
to bellowed woes, the hollow throes of hordes.

We oust the rebel herd. We fell the weeds,
whose tortured souls refuel the howls of hell.
Below our feet, the rotted shrub reseeds
the fortress where our hooded elders dwell.

The flesh we shred restores the forest’s lore.
The blood we shed roulettes the fettered wheel.
Below the trees, where heroes dwelt before,
the Lords of Order bless our lettered steel.

Where seeds of sorrow bud before the rose,
the shroud of Ulfberht robes our oldest foes.

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Finally, this sonnet, also Shakespearean, contains alliterations on the first and third beats of each line:

CLEOPATRA

Because I loved her, Cleopatra died,
a hooded serpent held against her breast.
The snake reborn a sickle at her side,
a crimson trickle crept across her chest.

Because I loved her, Cleopatra sighed
where turquoise waters turned to emerald streams,
and venom strained the veins of rivers wide....
(Because I dreamed her, Cleopatra dreams.)
 
Because I loved her, Cleopatra lied,
with looks of lapis lazuli and gold —
but Neptune drowned the Nile, when vultures vied
to see the pride, in sultry eyes, go cold.

Because I loved her, Cleopatra tried,
a hooded serpent held against the tide.