I tried to write a sonnet answering thee,
And yet no matter how the lines were set,
The verse turned turgid and Italianate,
Beneath my black-thumb hammer poetry.
A disquisition on astronomy
And souls paid four-sevenths of the debt
But my rhymes could only counterfeit
Bereft, betrayed, extinct sincerity.
Neither would my volta vault, nor words
Exceed themselves; the whole would not gel.
Revulsed and weary of excreted words,
Unshriven, I consigned them all to hell.
And so I’m left without a poem for you
And cannot say the truths I know are true.