Over dinner one night two years ago, a friend revealed to me that the great love she had left her husband for was no more than a roommate now. For the last year, they had been pretending in front of family and friends to be a couple, but really they slept in separate bedrooms and rarely spoke. Now here I stood, on the downtown subway platform awaiting the number six train to take me to the man whose love I had been resisting for months. On the train, filled with fear and anticipation, nausea and love, I began my first sonnet.

.

As a playwright, I have always favored formal poetry over free verse because the boundaries and rigidity of formal poetry mirror the structural limitations of plays. The word sonnet means “little song.” Here is my first little song about love, in the Elizabethan mode:

.

Sonnet for a Heartsick Friend

.

We met in P.J. Clarkes, a famous New York haunt,

And we slurped down oysters and drinks with rum,

You leaned forward, silencing the restaurant--

Not really—but I sensed bad news to come.

You told me the love you had was over,

You’d been living a lie, a sham, an act,

And oh, who the hell wants to be sober

When you’re talking of a heartbreak like that?

--Waiter here! bring a round, and make it strong—

You said, “Never again will I love or trust,

And I’ve cried myself empty way too long.

I’m done, I’m finished, and it’s been a bust.”

              But me, I vow to play loose with my heart.

              Here comes the hammer to smash it apart.

.

Two years later, the love I was so worried about, has lasted. For two years, I have been deeply in love. Yet love has not made me happy. It has tormented me and bent my mind so that I live in fear of losing the beloved. I want to lock my heart, guard the precious. I decided to consult an expert on love - William Shakespeare. What could a man who’s been dead four hundred years know about love? A lot. After all, he wrote 154 love sonnets, not to mention some pretty great plays on the subject.

.

I began to explore Shakespeare’s sonnets, to unlock their wisdom and find relief from my worry. Some of the sonnets have brought me great comfort; others have not. Even Shakespeare doesn’t know everything about love. Still, there was a lot of great beauty, if not enduring wisdom, in the poems. I decided, in an act of monumental foolishness, to write my own responses to each of the 154 sonnets.

.

Shakespeare’s last two sonnets, 153 and 154, both deal with Greek myth. In these two linked sonnets, Cupid falls asleep in the woods, and a chaste nymph of the goddess Diana steals his torch and douses it in a cold fountain. The fountain is thereafter supposed to cure lovesickness when a lover bathes in it. But in Sonnet 154, the final sonnet in Shakespeare’s collection, the speaker finds that after bathing in the water, he is not cured of his passion, and he leaves us with this couplet:

.

Came there for cure, and this by that I prove:

Love’s fire heats water; water cools not love.

.

In other words, there is no hope for the hopelessly in love. Here is my response to Sonnets 153 and 154:

.

So, Aphrodite, my lovely dear friend,

You need to shield me now from my own fears,

Because the beautiful man you did send

Penetrated my fortress with his…spear.

And the bitter rushes in with the sweet.

All of the hurts and the ghosts of the past

Are trying to deal me a bruising defeat,

Kicking me, yelling that love doesn’t last.

I want to be untouchable, hard, aloof,

Protected from heartbreak, so please make me

Solid, indestructible, bulletproof.

Too late—Cupid has already shot me.

              Faithful Hera will say love's never sure

              But often a flower grows from manure.

.

Thanks for reading JWorld Café, the Poetica Magazine Blog

Robyn Burland, Guest Blogger

.

Robyn Burland is a playwright and drama teacher living in New York. Her plays have been produced in New York and regional theatres around the country. She is chair of the drama department at Bronx Performance Conservatory, and artistic director of Skipping Stones, a theatre company for city teens that deals with contemporary issues. - Linda Pressman, Blog Editor