I agree with the comments posted above by Deborah and Jim. This is a really terrific poem: it does what I guess most of us want poetry to do – it describes something accurately, by doing so it evokes appropriate emotion, and its aesthetic qualities provide a measure of perspective and consolation for an event that pushes away perspective and seems to mark itself as outside the possibility of consolation. I’m really surprised and pleased at the quality of the sonnets that have been posted, but even given the high standard I think this one of the best in the bake-off. A couple of quibbles/queries. Why is it lineated as it is? I see no real point to that, and would have found either an 8 line stanza followed by a 6 line stanza, or three quatrains followed by a couplet, both fine and obvious ways to lineate it. The very opening slightly bothers me – one could say it’s not the Lord so much as the doctors who are going to flood her nerves with sedatives. The "but" in line 8 bothered me slightly too, as if kindness and flirtatiousness were somehow normally to be considered as opposed qualities? I’d have thought flirtatiousness in this sort of situation is a kind of kindness. The volta comes very late indeed (the middle of line 13) but that seems appropriate to what is being described so that’s less a quibble than an observation.
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