Three Spears
Published on February 23, 2023
Three Spears
Sonnet — Daily Poetry for The Master of Works #50
Courtesy Lexica.art
The first assault was with the spear of desire
Leaping from fond faces and cherished bodies,
From every wound there is a cry of despair
Like bloodied priests wailing to their deities.
The second assault was with the fear of death
Of dear brood and all the selves I had become,
The brood spared, the selves starved of breath
Fall yet gasping like fish out of its watery home.
The third assault was with the needle of incapacity
That with pricks severs all the strands woven,
Am afflicted now with a hundred ills of inability
As if my heart and tongue never a song had known.
Thy three spears have pierced like three dire boons,
Content Thou with Thy quiver of strange mercies?