SYLVIA AND DYLAN’S SONNET

Sylvia, do not go gentle into that good night.
Don't tell me what to do Dylan, Achtung!
All wise poets at the end know dark is right.
I'll disappear in darkness as if by bees stung.

It's your cries of anguish I cannot bear.
I'm not dying for you, Bard of Buggerall!
You die, Sylvia, because of truth you fear!
I'll stamp out my own light, dear: my call.

Love is dying like a piece of venison hung.
Are you drunk again, Dylan, bottled, tight?
Lady, what you really need is Freud or Jung.
I'll watch the last wave and say, "How bright."

Sylvia, by your suicide, you stay forever young.
Dylan, do not let your lies knot up your tongue.

Christopher T. George

Albatross Night

Often to pass the time on board before the first-born
will catch an albatross, his wings of flame
which chaperone a Calm Night, the everlasting and the same,
across the bitter brooding mother over chaos..

Tied to the deck, whirling suns shall blaze and then decay
their fiery courses and then claim, embarrassed by its clumsiness.
Let its great white wings of the darkness whence they came
at its sides like a pair of unshipped oars, Back to Nirvanic.

How weak and awkward, even comical, feeble sun of life burns
this traveller but lately so adroit - and sounded is the hour.
One deckhand sticks a pipestem in its beak for my long sleep
another mocks the cripple that once flew! I shall,

the Poet, like this monarch of the clouds, the feverish light
riding the storm above the marksman's range, welcome the darkness
exiled on the ground. Hooted and jeered, I shall softly creep
because of his great wings, Into the quiet bosom of the Night

-- Charles Baudelaire & James Weldon Johnson