I Spend my Nights Composing Sonnets for The Dead:
Charles Randall Stanfield
I spend my nights composing sonnets for
The dead. The great majority of these
I never knew because they number more
Than friends and relatives I try to seize
In poetry. I write of Talleyrand
And Rimbaud, Nietzsche, and Michel Foucault,
Their lovers, Paul Verlaine, composer Jean,
And Héloïse and Abelard. I go
To gravesides in Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois
And Père-Lachaise and, heavy, come away
With words that carry faithfulness and awe
Back onto paper made to hold dismay.
..And then I set down agony, subdue
….It line by line, in rhyming pain for you.