Open Link Night #368

Hello, fellow poets! Today I am hosting my first Open Link Night. As most of you may know, OLN allows you the opportunity to share ONE poem of your choice with the rest of the dVerse community. There is no particular theme or form to be followed. If you missed the deadline for a recent prompt, you could also use this as a chance to respond to it.

You are welcome to use the mini-prompt offered below.Today I would like to share excerpts from one my favourite Indian poets writing in English. Vikram Seth’s “The Golden Gate” came out in 1986, when I was a young girl. I read it much later, when I was writing rhyming poems in my diary feverishly, hoping to publish one day and become famous! 😉

What fascinated me was that the entire novel was written in sonnet form (Onegin sonnet or Pushkin sonnet), that too in iambic tetrameter! I had just begun to read modern poets and the magazines and newspapers that I read, (most of us in India did not have internet in the late 80s) indicated that rhyming was passe. Reading The Golden Gate gave me hope that the traditional form of poetry did have an audience/readership.

Below are a few sonnets from the novel.

How beautiful it is, when waking,

To find one’s lover at one’s side;

The delicate slow light is breaking

Irresolutely through the wide

Bay windows of their bedroom, falling

On Liz’s hair, and John’s recalling

How last night she untied it, how

It flowed between his hands; but now

She lies asleep, unswiftly breathing;

Her thoughts are not with him, her dreams

Traverse the solitary streams

Of inward lands, yet her hair, wreathing

The pillow in a mesh of light,

Returns to him the fugitive night

1.16

Sweet Siamese of rare refulgence

With chocolate ears and limbs of tow,

Jan gives them love, food, and indulgence

The cats take this for granted, show

Scant deference to their human betters;

In splendour Jan can ill afford,

In silken bed, on sumptuous board

They fatten. Though, when out of favor,

The L and C on their beds are

Interpreted “Louise” and “Catarrh,”

Jan relishes the warmth and savor

The deeds of Cuff and Link confer,

The love they deign to yield to her.

13.4

Patron of your beloved city,

O San Francisco, saint of love,

Co-sufferer in searing pity

Of all our griefs, whom from above

Birds would alight on, singing, feeding

Within your hands–hands pierced and bleeding

With Christ’s own signs–who, stigmatized

As dupe and clown, apostrophized

The sun in its white blistering starkness

As brother, and the blistered moon

As sister, and who, blind at noon,

Opened your heart and sang in darkness–

And where it was, sowed light, look down.

Solace the sorrows of your town.

Here’s another favourite…

All you who sleep tonight

Far from the ones you love,

No hands to left or right,

And emptiness above –

Know that you aren’t alone.

The whole world shares your tears,

Some for two nights or one,

And some for all their years.

You can take inspiration from any of the sonnets above and write a poem in the sonnet form, if you wish.

Or use the poem “All you who sleep tonight” as a springboard to write about your own sleeplessness.

If you are new to dVerse, here’s what to do:

Write one poem of your choosing, no required topic/form/length OR write one poem inspired by the mini-prompt provided above.

Post the poem on your blog and add the URL for your poem to Mr. Linky below.

Remember to either tag dVerse in your post, or include a link at the end of your poem that leads readers back to dVerse.

Do come back to read what others have posted.

Have fun.