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  #1  
Unread 01-18-2018, 06:45 AM
Jan Iwaszkiewicz's Avatar
Jan Iwaszkiewicz Jan Iwaszkiewicz is offline
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Location: Hunter Valley, NSW, Australia
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Default Gwen Harwood Acrostic Sonnets

Gwen Harwood


Eloisa to Abelard

Solace and hope depart. God’s finger traces
on fields of frozen darkness: You shall find
loss, absence, nothing. Walking on the wind
Our lord speaks to a crowd of foolish faces,

no face that is not mine, while filtering through
gaps, honeycombs of memory you seem
but the faint ghost of a remembered dream.
Unveiled by pain, I bleed. My wound is you.

Lost in the well of space, my spirit hears
“Lucis creator optime…” The choir
entreats God, out of tune. I join my voice
to theirs. Nightfall’s immense. I taste my tears.
I reap the harvest of my own desire.
No heart escapes the torment of its choice.

Abelard to Eloisa

Far above memory’s landscape let the fears
unlatched from thundering valleys of your mind
carry their lightning. Stare the sun up. Find
kinetic heat to scorch your mist of tears.

All that vision limned by night appears
loose in dismembering air: think yourself blind.
Louder than death in headlines the unkind
elements hawk my passion: stop your ears.

Deny me now. Be Doubting Thomas. Thrust
into my side the finger of your grief.
Tell me I am an apparition frayed
out of the tattered winding-sheet of lust.
Recall no ghost of love. Let no belief
summon me, fleshed and bleeding, from the shade.

Part of a great Australian tradition of literary hoax.
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Unread 01-18-2018, 06:57 AM
John Isbell John Isbell is offline
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Now that's poetry. I think they're lovely (as poetry, especially the first, though both are fine).

Cheers,
John

Update: thank you for introducing me to Gwen Harwood.
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  #3  
Unread 01-24-2018, 11:51 PM
Ann Drysdale's Avatar
Ann Drysdale Ann Drysdale is offline
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Proves that poetry has many ways of getting its message across.
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