Monday, June 11, 2018

101 Poems, Number 35


Favorite Poems Throughout My Life


35: Sonnet 111 (“O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide”), 1609, by William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

I memorized this—not too long
Ago.It’s dense. Not like a song
That flows along so sensibly—
Like woodland brooks, so merrily.

It is a plea for pity, see?
“Feel sorry for a writer—me.
My life is really not that grand.”
And then that phrase, “The dyer’s hand”?

Well, that is why these lines I learned:
“My name’s in there! So I’m concerned!”
My ancestors were dyers, see—
They colored things (and not for free).

So now these words are in my head—
I mumble them—sometimes in bed.
And so these words will never leave—
Or so, at least, I must believe.


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