Clay

(sonnet)

Many years ago, in the ancient days when I was writing sonnets and my interests were more eschatological than they are today, I wrote this Petrarchan sonnet. (Its theme comes from Jeremiah 18:1-12.) It then sat in my notebook for 45 years, until on a whim I decided to try to publish my older metrical poems. It appeared in Blue Unicorn, Spring 2025.

	Clay

For all the wars and all the threats of war
till Armageddon and since Ilium,
for all the plagues and misery and dumb
despair since first Pandora loosed her door,
for all this wrath, for all this human gore,
there never was a smile, however numb
that did not have the power to become
the last of many, but the first of more.
Until the very last: then Maker cried,
“Thus! It is done! Mankind have made their end,
and I have grown with them, and I have died,”
surveyed the smoking ground, and downward bent,
smiled, picked up the clay, and with a sigh,
turned to the wheel, and worked the clay again.