Never Mind Astrophel and Stella

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem

If sonnets are supposed to be about

Love, love and life, love, love and death, the men

Who write them and the women give the shout

Of lyric poetry to love, again

To death, perpetual them both, like more

Than stars since stars consume themselves, explode

And die unnumbered in their nths, a corps

Innumerable in corpses, death their mode

And flaring fate.  Yes, sonnets too will die

When all the cosmos sends itself to death

Expanded so in deepest freeze when sky

Itself will die and leave no starry breath.

  So . . . sonnets, stars and love will fade away

    When gods are gone with nothing left to say.

~ Phillip Whidden