Poem 099, Sonnet 46: Leading Heart Poem by Samer Madbak

O brazen heart, enmeshed in sin primeval,
How long will you maintain your wicked ways?
Wherefore your lurid fires remain ablaze?
What mightiness can smother your upheaval?
O how I oft attempted your retrieval
In vain, how strove I to constrain your craze,
Your bacchic bent, how oft an inch I’d raise
You’d plummet leagues into the tide of evil
O pith of bane! I cannot but conform
With your mischief and bend before your storm
You lead now! Maybe your paludal plies
Embrace the crystal fount of Paradise,
Perchance your charring on the pyre of shame
Brings forth the rising Phoenix from the flame!


Adelaide
April 26th 1993