by: Leo Grant
Across the Margin offers up an enchanting sonnet, a poem which speaks directly to the greatest of bards, William Shakespeare… ((Across the Margin, taking a recess from the poetic offerings of our Poetry Editor Richard Roundy, proudly presents a poem of an aesthetic we have yet to exhibit, a tribute to an all time great.))
Your verses, Shakespeare, fill me oft with awe
To think that you with my career would toy.
Some notions make me ill and quease my maw;
You have confused me with some other boy.
I have no need to see my child betimes
Nor worry ‘bout the debt I owe mankind,
Nor fear the noxious urgings of thy rhymes;
I see that love is not alone as blind.
You do not see that I abhor thy love
And have no wit the ways of love to delve,
But you offend the Deity above,
For you care not that I am only twelve.
Beware my parents’ anger—they have power
To see that you do twenty in the Tower.
