The Rag-Picker's Guide to Poetry: Poems, Poets, Process

Sonnets, Holy and Unholy

137 Mark Jarman Sonnets,Holy and Unholy SofTeN The BloW, IMAgINed god, ANd gIve Soften the blow, imagined God, and give Me one good reason for this punishment. Where does the pressure come from? Is it meant To kill me in the end or help me live? My thoughts about you are derivative. Still, I believe a part of me is bent To make your grace look like an accident And keep my soul from being operative. But if I’m to be bent back like the pole A horseshoe clangs against and gives a kink to, Then take me like the grinning iron monger I saw once twist a bar that made him sink to His knees. His tongue was like a hot pink coal As he laughed and said he thought that he was stronger. Mark Jarman, Unholy Sonnets (“Batter My Heart, Three-Person’d God” John Donne, Holy Sonnets) I cAN’T do MoRe ThAN ThIS. I cAN’T do leSS— I can’t do more than this. I can’t do less— To choose a target adamant as death And try to find a way to make it bend. Try faith and insult. Even try to bless 138 The RAg-PIckeR’S guIde To PoeTRy Annihilation for its selflessness. Try cool indifference. Try a lust for life. Blue smoke by day and mirror-fire by night. Try forcing imagination to confess, In the strict silence of the infinite spaces, That it was made for filling in the blanks, For drawing features on the empty faces, Including death’s, and reading them like books. Try reading, then, the writing on the face That blunts immortal and industrial diamonds. Mark Jarman, Unholy Sonnets (“Death, Be Not Proud” John Donne, Holy Sonnets) WhAT WIll We gIve uP IN The AfTeR lIfe What will we give up in the after life, When we have been enhanced to a higher power And all the goodness of the body made so pure Its quantum leap will have to feel like loss? In our spirit flesh, pneumatikon (Though the Greek sounds like a mattress): to see Will be to take; to wish for, have; to sigh Will be the sign of utter satisfaction. But what about that instant of desire Before we’re gratified, the rapturous waiting On this side of epiphany and climax? Without the lapse of time, we’ll lose that pleasure, The unique arousal of previsioning, The thrill in scenting that first cup of coffee. Mark Jarman, Unholy Sonnets (“I Am a Little World Made Cunningly” John Donne, Holy Sonnets) Sonnets, Holy and Unholy 139 in viA est cisternA All she remembers from her Latin class Is a phrase she echoes for her granddaughter. Lately I hear in everything she says A depth that she covers up with laughter. In the road is a well. But in her mind It fills with blanks, like a shaft of sand and pebbles. A well is in the road. It is profound, I’m sure, it is a phrase with many levels. And then, I see one: the woman with five husbands Met Jesus there. But my mother had only one— Unless now having lost him she understands That he was never who she thought, but someone Who was different men with different women through the years. In the road is a well. It fills with tears. Mark Jarman, Unholy Sonnets (“Since She Whom I Lov’d Hath Paid her Last Debt” John Donne, Holy Sonnets) John Donne (1572–1631), born Roman Catholic in a dangerous time and place to be one, in late Elizabethan England, and relatively well off, traveled the world as a soldier, was known as a bit of a lad, a dandy and a ladies’ man, and a poet of wit and sensuality and erotic pleasure. In 1600 he was poised for a diplomatic career, as secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, and made the mistake of falling in love with his boss’s niece Anne More, married her in secret against her uncle’s and father’s wishes, and ruined his career. Even ended up in prison for a spell. He lived in a kind of internal exile in the countryside with his wife and family for a dozen years, working as a lawyer, and finally gaining favor with King James, who would reinstate him at court, but only if he...