Blank Sonnet

George Elliott Clarke
From:   Whylah Falls, 1990.

     The air smells of rhubarb, occasional
Roses, or first birth of blossoms, a fresh,
Undulant hurt, so body snaps and curls
Like flower. I step through snow as thin as script
Watch white stars spin dizzy as drunks, and yearn
To sleep beneath a patchwork quilt of rum.
I want the slow, sure collapse of language
Washed out by alcohol. Lovely Shelley,
I have no use for measured, cadenced verse
If you won't read. Icarus-Iike, I'll fall
Against this page of snow, tumble blackly
Across vision to drown in the white sea
That closes every poem -the white reverse
That cancels the blackness of each image.

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George Elliott Clarke's works copyright © to the author.