Sonnet Suggested By Homer, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, Paul Vakzy, James Joyce, Et Al.

Delmore Schwartz

Let me not, ever, to the marriage in Cana
Of Galilee admit the slightest sentiment
Of doubt about the astonishing and sustaining manna
Of chance and choice to throw a shadow’s element
Of disbelief in truth—Love is not love
Nor is the love of love its truth in consciousness
If it can be made hesitant by any crow or dove or
                  seeming angel or demon from above or from below
Or made more than it is knows itself to be by the authority
                  of any ministry of love.

O no—it is the choice of chances and the chancing of
                  all choice—the wine
which was the water may be sickening, unsatisfying or
                  sour
A new barbiturate drawn from the fattest flower
That prospers green on Lethe’s shore. For every hour
Denies or once again affirms the vow and the ultimate
                  tower
Of aspiration which made Ulysses toil so far away from
                  home
And then, for years, strive against every wanton desire,
                  sea and fire, to return across the.
                  ever-threatening seas
A journey forever far beyond all the vivid eloquence
                  of every poet and all poetry.

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