we can’t help stretching these last few days out…
here’s genevieve!:
oh wow, what a wonderful reading!! genevieve is a poet living in new york, a recent winner of the 2009 Amy Award for poetry and a finalist for the Ruth Lilly Fellowship…her poems appear widely! google her and find out her wonder!
thank you genny for sharing this! it’s beautiful!
Sonnet 146
Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,
These rebel powers that thee array;
Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth,
Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?
Why so large cost, having so short a lease,
Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?
Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,
Eat up thy charge? is this thy body’s end?
Then soul, live thou upon thy servant’s loss,
And let that pine to aggravate thy store;
Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;
Within be fed, without be rich no more:
So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men,
And Death once dead, there’s no more dying then.