Area 42

In a previous post I admitted my secret shame: long ago, while young and foolish, I committed poetry. Now old and foolish, I am revisiting some of my old sonnets. My second sonnet was written as another rebuttal, this time to Shakespeare’s #130, which goes like this:

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

I have seen roses damasked, red and white
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound.
I grant I never saw a goddess go:
My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.

And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

—William Shakespeare #130

To me, Shakespeare’s words didn’t seem very gallant, but then he was a poet, while I’m just a bag of words. (Apropos nothing, I was also surprised at first by the mention of wires, but structural wire might be handy in the theater, even then.) Whatever my reasons, this was my answer:

How often Bill and I are set at odds,
In thinking what is foul and what is fair!
He’d praise paired orbs of sunlight to the gods,
I, dappled green of hillsides—beauty rare!

Our verses question love with too much thought
Regarding eyes: brown, black, grey, green or blue.
Mute heart’s affection knows it matters not
Whose face is beautiful, but rather who.

The heart in love informs the mind, “that’s her,”
Without explaining why it thinks her fair.
The mind then conjures reasons to prefer
This woman, with whom beauties else to share:

Sun, coral, roses, snow, and perfume sweet,
Beautiful themselves, need not compete.

—Marcus Brooks #2

This was dedicated May 10, 1990, to the same Erica upon whom I afflicted my first sonnet. About four months later, I tried a riff actually quoting the same Shakespearean verse, this time heading in another direction:

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun
That washes out the countenance of day.
Through darkened orbs the dreams of night are won:
A subtle glance emits a piercing ray.

The glist’ning laughter plays across her face
Like dewfall sparkling on a moonlit knoll.
Her smould’ring passion finds a warming place
Aglow within those gleaming disks of coal.

While golden features garner instant praise
For satisfying visual appeal,
My deeper instincts voice a different phrase,
Preferring contrast, seeking what is real.

My mood takes on a scientific spark,
As it would study light, seeks out the dark.

—Marcus Brooks #3

There you have it. This one was addressed to a certain chiaroscuro Linda, one of several Lindas I’ve known, so no one but she and I knows which! (And I doubt she remembers.)