Four Sonnets for the Price of None
Four Sonnets for the Price of None
When I’m too old to toil too young to die
I’ll write some lines while my brain’s still spry
Not say in English gone fishing but Greek
A private joke only scholars find wry
Sing to me muses in tongues I can’t speak
Tone poems in languages I can’t name
Crystallize images happy or bleak
So my words can attribute blame or fame
Translate your meaning so I get your drift
Let me hear your music framing your chords
Picture your meaning in words I can shift
into metrical patterns weaving your words
Sing to me muse with voice universal
Each time I recite without rehearsal
Tell me some tales you never told before
Tell what the future may take from its store
To challenge every species to find
a way forward preserving its own kind
From one day’s generation to the next
sunrise to sunset moonrise to moonset
high tide low tide morning and evening
never knowing what the future may bring
Some more sentient others much more dumb
some with levity cavalier hamstrung
by prejudice innate humor heartless
original sin anything worthless
Sing to me muse with voice universal
Each time I recite without rehearsal
Now make me bolder now make me stronger
Let me be ready to face a danger
No more will they swarm ashore from longboats
Swing axes instead cyber taunts they’ll boast
That some will heed and flock to their standard
While others will know they still attack hard
With bitter messages sweetened but deadly still
Crippling minds with hate for which there’s no pill
And all along coal trains keep going by
Are there contracts that say we must supply
Wyoming coal to our friends in China
Whose cyber spies bug our candelabra?
Sing to me muse with voice universal
Each time I recite without rehearsal
Let me project my voice through time
Never let me struggle to find a rhyme
Or fill a line with requisite meter
Choosing my own form from time to time
Trampling iambic feet with anapests
Spontaneously spiking a spondee
Into the dactyl hexameter drone
And making it squeak with dubbed track of glee
Canned laughter cued on demand by a script
Written in the latest language fashion
Launched to the cloud from nondescript notebooks
Noticed by no one except by the swarm
Sing to me muse with voice universal
Each time I recite without rehearsal
Richard M. (Dick) Russell
© January 2022
