That time of year thou may’st in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang. . . .
William Shakespeare, from Sonnet 73 (1609)
I did but prompt the age to quit their clogs
By the known rules of ancient liberty,
When straight a barbarous noise environs me
Of owls and cuckoos, asses, apes and dogs: . . .
John Milton. from Sonnet 12 (1673)
I
Poetry, I suppose, has its uses—
With verse, our aging poets are allowed
To picture vicious Time afflict abuse—
We see those chill-killed leaves, abandoned boughs,
Nightfall, gray embers—images that force
His love (somehow) to love that raspy breath
Still more, threatened as it is by that coarse
Cold silence, mute music, encroaching death.
Such poems evoke tapestries—woven views.
You don’t just age and die! You lose your leaves.
The branches of your being wave adieus,
Quiv’ring, chilled, as twilight falls to night, grieve,
As the fire that warmed your life cools to ash.
Evocative verse, visual, not brash.
II
Yet verses sometimes argue, snarl and snap.
Evocation’s fine, but, to save the world,
Wise ancient myths must, sometimes, be unfurled;
A fierce voice must bark, hoot, and bray right back!
The Blind Bard couldn’t know his stormy rap
Featuring Latona’s vengeance (she turned
Ugly thugs to noisy frogs for churning
Truth to mud) would, for us, be dim claptrap.
But what’s to do when ones new wife bugs out?
Divorce, of course; except the law denied
That route. He wrote to exorcise his plight—
That’s when the din drowned out his gut-wrenched shout!
Evoke? Argue? How heal his soul’s gangrene?
This kneads the heart; that vents the shattered spleen!
(5/5/08)
Shakespeare’s evocation of infirm old age speaks for itself; Milton’s rant, responding to Presbyterian Puritans’ furious attacks on his arguments for liberalized divorce law, projects the humiliation and rage created when his wife deserted him a few weeks after their marriage.
