Sonnet

I
[CXX]

選擇一種形式

Cast your second stones,
accursed sooty sonnets!
Haiku missed their mark.

II
[CCCLXV]

戴歐尼修斯

The sonnets rend me
limb from limb, like Osiris
the netmender's son.

III
[CDXVII]

捕夢網
In memory of Elizabeth Bishop

Fraught with art and creed
handcrafted, aught, Writer, but
your sonnet. Caught. Freed.

IV
[CDXCIX]

μηδὲν ἄγαν

Nothing to excess,
be it gothic sonnets, sex,
or slightly soiled love.

V
[DXXXIII]

叫石头变成饼

Leave no stone unturned:
all routes through poetry cross
unleavened sonnets.

VI
[DCCCLXXX]

西方的沒落

Ormolu sonnets
decay into bronze haiku,
many-coloured stones.

VII
[MLXXIX]

哨兵的夢想

Seventeen syllables long —
tankas require thirty-one —
even one word wrong
vitiates all that we've done.
Echoes mate the song,
not to mention the odd pun,
with a multilingual strong
Narr-ative's sheer fun.
I imagine a volta
entangling our wrists,
lifting both our spirits here:
some fandango no Travolta
engaging in twists
need blame on a sonneteer.

VIII
[MCCCXCIII]

Ὀσυμανδύας

Summon, dead sonnet,
words of memory, of fame --
monuments and odes.

IX
[MCDLV]

Брось

Hurl, wretched sonnet,
your eight-and-six-make-fourteen
into air-air-air.

X
[MDLXXVIII]

優先

Does the hen create
the sonnet or the sonnet
create the hen's egg?

XI
[MDCXXXVII]

火花

If I blow softly
this sacred sonnet blazes
from a just struck match.

XII
[MDCCLXXXIV]

الزخرف

No fable, good sonnet,
enables the Son of God
not to judge you now.

XIII
[MDCCCXXVI]

十四行诗

Sonnet, Song of Songs,
thank you, dream catcher, for birthdays,
each celebrated
verse by verse through your goodly
even though quaint offices.
Now memories fade,
whether seven-syllabled
neumes or high-fived psalms
in their pentatonic fronds,
eliding the desert winds,
letting their cool sands
slip through our fingers, our palms
evening the moist
night air like fresh-laundered sheets.

XIV
[MDCCCXXVII]

這里和那裡
in memory of Joan Murphy

Mama's is still here.
So many mothers' sonnets
still there forever.

19 November 2017
[From Year of the Rooster]