Friday, June 10, 2011

Sonnet for Steve Palmer



4131 Sonnet for Steve Palmer copyright by Martin Bidney [recited on the video]

ARIES (March 21-April 19). Instead of imagining or assuming what others see when they look at you, know for sure. Take a picture or videotape yourself. The results will help you project the image you want to project.

–-Press & Sun-Bulletin, June 7, 2011

Songs upon my psaltery
With the morning sun ray strove. . . .

          --J. W. von Goethe, “Past in Present,”
(poem 13 in West-East Divan, tr. MB
Albany: SUNY P, 2011)

Though I was born in Taurus, April twenty-first,
I like to check on neighbor Aries too and see
If there is profit, Nancy-Reagan-wise, for me
In guidance from a sign. The writer’s here immersed

In wisdom relevant to what I need to do.
Exactly what we’re planning! Have a video
Journal to give the world the image you would show,
With poetry, of course. On Thursday, thanks to you,

I’ll hearken to the starry wizard of the Press
And, like Apollo-god, Sun-Bulletin display
From whence a writer-light of high Olympus may

Not only me in recitation-frame portray
But send, with words, into the worried wilderness
A demonstration: psaltery and solar ray.

6/7/11  

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