Eine Klage-Welt

(Sonnet with rhymes supplied by Court Green magazine)


Orpheus

He slips below the roses scenting June
And pauses in Hades’s gate—which trembles at the stress
Of his living tread—for a last glance at the moon,
Pale thought haunting a skull of sky.... I obsess
Over this moment in the story, not the wife a snake
Had ruined, not the celebrated but moot
Petition before a queen on a throne like a wedding cake,
His song puzzled mid-word: “Eurydice, now more beaut—“

Think of the world he leaves behind: Bread and Garbo,
Sex and storms, books, the concept of play,
Randomness, the entwined fates of king and hobo,
This dear hubbub, the cipher we name today.
Could I turn, like him, from the moon? My song a rhinestone
After the diamond of the real? After flowers, a sad cologne?