Poeta Doctus

Back in the early Nineties of last century (!) when I wrote this poem, the fashion among many Canadian (at least) poets was to write sonnet sequences. By chance, one day, I wrote a poem (“I know the Aurora Borealis” in Grand Gnostic Central) that happened to have fourteen lines. That chance (which to my ear happily rhymes with ‘chants’) occurrence began an ongoing, half-satirical series of accidentally-fourteen-line poems I called variously over the years “soughknots” (literally “air-knots”) and here “sonots” (so not sonnets!).

Its being Easter Sunday brought to mind the opening line and title of another sonot from Ladonian Magnitudes, “Come out of the cave…”, a poem marked by if not marking the emergence of sociality with the warmer days of spring. Of course, now, with the social distancing imposed by Covid-19, getting out into the warmer sunshine is more delayed than it was in 1992, but, then, the poem wanders through art and memory, too, where we can all sojourn until we emerge from this present staid-of-emergency.

“Come out of the cave…”

Come out of the cave

Spring’s first cold night

After an afternoon on the Thing with George

Embryons desséchés and six Gnosiennes, followed by Sonatine bureaucratique and Le Picadilly in the air

This time the third

I think of the natural periodical ecstasy

We call sleep

And consequently dream

Washing and drying the dishes

After the red cabbage, letcho, and potatoes sour-style

Everything put away in place for tomorrow

I pour the hot milk into the yoghurt jars

Remembering measuring solutions in Chemistry

Certain of the results