"Sonata quasi una Fantasia" by Giovanni Dania

Sonata quasi una Fantasia

A. Concerning- What Else?- Love

I.
Press'd for time, we sing Life's sweet duet
In hush'd tones of religious reverence.
And we ask little in the way of recompense:
Only to die, and to live to die but once more.
Let's dance the jolly jig, the merry minuet,
And,- the devil be damn'd!- forget all pain.
Let us not be awash in Hellish brimstone
(Not unlike some troubl'd collective Whore),
But to soar through cloudfull ethereal skies
And thus we'll die, and live to die once again;
Never again shall we have to feel alone,
None can accuse us of ephemeral love.
Those who wish to inveigh us clearly
Have never been damn'd to below, nor bless'd from above.
Our hearth is where some late Poet lies,
Our future where dead monks can't yet see.

II.
Let others' harder hearts play at war
While we dance on the grave of Hate;
Down goes another bought potentate
Who, once fallen, shall rise nevermore.-
Hush! thou Raven, for in thy stead
Is a laurel'd dove who shall keep us dead.
Some fanci'd wraith is ever the cause
Of fear, with its sharp psychic claws.
Let's not to Tartarean shores away,
But on Elysian fields go play.
A lion's carcass cannot hope to compare
To thy sweetish kisses,- ah, thou art fair;
And thou bring'st me alway to this gladsome estate.
Let's be a pair, while wiser loners stare.

III.
It's said thou'rt the essence
Of what's been granted to me:
With deader eyes I now see,
With senseless lips I now cry.
Kiss my weary putrescence
Like none other dares try.
Let pen and paper commingle, sweet,
Let our fingertips be lovers of old.
Though the bridal bed's cold,
Remember, my dearest Hero,
Thy Leander shall not drown, o no.
I latch on to thy skillful ministrations
Like a babe would to a wetnurse's ripe swell'd teat.
I bloody well die at no less a feat
Than thy loving prestidigitations.-
But I demand so much more from these tender lessons.

B. Of King Hate

IV.
When loving and caring become acts too impossible,
We can rest assur'd, as we know who's responsible:
His Majesty the King defines and redefines
The boundaries of Emotion. What's thine's, what's mine's
Are so ambiguous, Hate looks on with glee
When fighting and violence shape up our lives.
And though his rules are such obvious knives
Cutting our ties, no one can yet be
His successor, for he lives until
The wheel of humanity comes to stand still.
...
[Left unfinished]

May 4, 1994