after a tomb in Little Saint Mary's Church, Cambridge
Here lyeth . . . (Sarah?) Drake beneath the floor,
a Persian carpet lapped across her stone
so all you read is -rah and Cambridgeshire
and that she was the cherished wife of someone
who caused her to sleep before the altar
like Samuel, consigned to night and God.
Mutely, being dead, she bears the thurifer
who stands on her, swinging his silver pod
of incense like a pendulum. What time
is it, six feet down? How long did they
tell her the wait would be? And is her name
written where it matters, legibly,
or will we all, given the same name -- Dust --
forget at last who was forgotten first?
With grateful acknowledgment to the editors of First Things, in whose pages this poem first appeared.
Posting this is a bit of a copout; it's an old poem, and I've probably posted it here before. But it's an artifact of what still stands as the best Lenten discipline I ever managed: to write a sonnet a day for the entire forty days of Lent. This was my discipline the first spring we lived in Cambridge, and when I look back on that spring I still see things as I saw them then, in terms of fourteen rhyming lines.
Last year I gave up blogging for Lent, which I'm not doing again, though I'll be posting only occasionally in order to work on some other projects. Later in the spring I'll be moving a lot of my blogging to another venue, though I'll still post here from time to time; more about that as things develop. In the meantime, part of my discipline for the season is to be more deliberate about "real," ie non-blog writing projects. I'm also trying to cut back my (considerable, lately) commenting on other blogs. I love the conversation, but right now it's amounting to avoidance writing . . . so much more fun to engage in witty banter than to slog through the article about assisted suicide . . .
Meanwhile, we've been studying sonnets in my online high-school English class. If you'd like to join us, or try your hand at some sonnet-writing for Lent, visit us here.
12 comments:
That's really good. I can't believe you wrote 40 sonnets in 40 days.
Thanks. Well, it was a great discipline. I did let myself off Sundays after a while, but I think I wrote 37 in all, of which maybe 7 were any good at all. It was kind of a fluke that the first one turned out, but I'd had time to think about it. Some of the later ones were just what you'd expect to write when all you know is that you have to write 14 rhyming lines by midnight. I was writing about stuff like the dress my daughter was wearing . . . that was a notably bad one. I can't even remember a lot of them. They were just exercises.
But I know now why poets tend to write lots of sonnets, if they write sonnets at all. First of all, they're addictive. I did this discipline nine years ago, and I still have a hard time not writing a sonnet when I go to write a poem. I think that might be why I've turned so much to prose. A 2,000-word essay cannot be a sonnet, and that's a relief. Also, you have to write a lot of sonnets in order to write one good one. I often wonder how many Shakespeare threw away, or how much longer Astrophil and Stella might be if the rejects were found.
I gave my online homeschool high-schoolers a sonnet-writing exercise . . . that link at the end of the post will take you there, if you want to try it out.
Oh, and I had been thinking about Sarah Drake for a long time. In our Cambridge parish, my seat in the choir stalls was at the end of the bench on the south side, and she lay literally at my feet. We had a lot of guest preachers, so the homilies were hit-and-miss and I spent a lot of time studying her slab in the floor and trying to make out the inscription, which was indeed obscured by a rug for a long time -- the choirmaster finally persuaded the Vicar to let us take it out, to improve acoustics, but that was long after this Lent.
If I'd sung soprano, I would never have known Sarah. Life's just full of lucky little accidents.
That's a first-rate poem, Mrs. T.
My lenten sacrifice also involves spending a lot less time online, where it's, as you note, about avoidane and procrastination, but also, for me, about connecting to people I know, since I know virtually no one in my new town yet. I'm hoping to turn that time toward my family and to prayer, two of the things I've been avoiding. Have a holy Lent.
Thanks so much, and a holy Lent to you, too. I'll pray for you. I also need to direct my attention towards my family and my prayer life . . . that's been a little too constant a theme at confession lately. So I hear you! And I'll look forward to "seeing" more of you after Easter.
May God bless you and your family with a blessed holy Lenten Season!
Thank you for blogging, for this beautiful sonnet and for the excellent idea and link for sonnet writing! Margie
Thanks, Margie.
I think this Lent must have been right before you all came to Cambridge? I remember that you were there for the 2000 election, because we watched the inauguration at your house . . . Anyway, you know the beautiful setting for this poem quite well!
In fact, if anyone's interested, you can "tour" this church by clicking the Little Saint Mary's link in my sidebar. And actually, Sarah's on the north side -- the left, facing the altar. I had my directions backwards.
Hello Mrs T
Thank you so much for the forty sonnets idea. I read about it here a few weeks ago and haven't been able to get it out of my head. I know Lent has all but passed now, and don't think I'll try for forty, but I thought at least I ought to try doing a few! I've linked to your site in my blog - if you want to take a look at mine, the relevant page is:
http://www.mandysutter.com/writing-sonnets/?preview=true&preview_id=203&preview_nonce=26af80b4d7
Thanks again!
Mandy
Thank you, Mandy!
Sorry, I left a crazy link just then. The brief one is http://www.mandysutter.com/blog/
Thanks!
Mandy
Thanks, Mandy -- I found it just fine. Your site is very nice, and again, I appreciate the link.
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