Five Sonnets: Radiance, Looking Down, Mar de Hoces & More

By Daniel Platt

Featured in New Lyre Summer 2023

Radiance 

A half-life passes, others come and go, 
But no clairvoyant eyes can find the day 
When what we’ve shared will finally ebb away. 
Our palette lacks the muted indigo, 
A shade to quench the incandescent glow— 
Our cataclysm’s radiant decay— 
And time provides no twilight to allay 
The swelter as the burnished memories flow. 
Our sin was unoriginal, and yet 
There was a bonding no one could explain, 
A synthesis of sorrow and a sweet 
Combustion only passion could beget, 
And if I could embrace it once again 
I’d stop my clocks and call the world complete. 

Looking Down 

Behold, she dangles, helpless in the sky, 
Affrighted by the curving earth below: 
It beckons so seductively, as though 
'Twould be a blessing if she were to fly 
Into its distant bosom, not to die, 
But rather to embrace, to love, to know 
(As we have known) the perfect vertigo 
Where, in an instant, all the world wheels by, 
But really I'm a stranger to extremes, 
And in my life, where trifling things abound, 
No heart-arresting plummet shall there be, 
Yet plucked from airy summits in my dreams 
I'm crushed against the safe and stable ground, 
Extinguished by familiarity. 

Mar de Hoces 

Stupendous jade-hued volumes of the sea  
That palpitate and crest on such a scale  
To make the sailor's resolution quail  
And falter; this typhoon is home to me.