Poetry

A Sonnenizio After a Line by Gerard Manley Hopkins

No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,
a devil’s pitchfork looms in thinning air
mid-strike beneath stars’ grief and stare
past our past grounding, proprioception’s thief.

Whitman pitched death as our lot, a spin
we could buy into, worst case, were we not
grafting grief for purchase, shocked by sins
of a homeland’s worst, a tyrant’s plot.

None better than a quick death, one-and-done,
this agony will last past all regret.
Pitch-perfect, what could we have said or done
to tune our hearts and minds to grief’s blood-let?

At one with nature in the past, we mourn
today our sprouted hope, forlorn.