Sonnets for a Missing Key: and some others

  Copyright © 2024 by Percival Everett

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of both the publisher and the copyright owner.

  Book design by Mark E. Cull

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Everett, Percival, author.

  Title: Sonnets for a missing key: (and some others) / Percival Everett.

  Description: Pasadena: Red Hen Press, 2024.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2024001605 (print) | LCCN 2024001606 (ebook) | ISBN 9781636281667 (paperback) | ISBN 9781636281674 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCGFT: Sonnets. | Poetry.

  Classification: LCC PS3555.V34 S68 2024 (print) | LCC PS3555.V34 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54—dc23/eng/20240117

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024001605

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024001606

  The National Endowment for the Arts, the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, the Ahmanson Foundation, the Dwight Stuart Youth Fund, the Max Factor Family Foundation, the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Foundation, the Pasadena Arts & Culture Commission and the City of Pasadena Cultural Affairs Division, the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, the Audrey & Sydney Irmas Charitable Foundation, the Meta & George Rosenberg Foundation, the Albert and Elaine Borchard Foundation, the Adams Family Foundation, Amazon Literary Partnership, the Sam Francis Foundation, and the Mara W. Breech Foundation partially support Red Hen Press.

  First Edition

  Published by Red Hen Press

  www.redhen.org

  For Kate and Mark

  Contents

  SONNETS

  A Minor

  B♭ Major

  F♯ Major

  G Major

  E♭ Minor

  A♭ Major

  G Minor

  E Minor

  C♯ Minor

  B Major

  E♭ Major

  D Major

  F Minor

  A♭ Minor

  E Major

  F♯ Minor

  C Minor

  B Minor

  D Minor

  F Major

  B♭ Minor

  C♯ Major

  A Major

  OTHER MODES

  1 agitato

  20 largo – C Minor

  15 sostenuto – D♭ Major

  10 molto allegro – C♯ Minor

  5 molto allegro – D Major

  24 allegro appassionato –D Minor

  19 vivace – E♭ Major

  14 allegro – D♯ Minor

  9 largo – E Major

  4 largo – E Minor

  23 moderato – F Major

  18 molto allegro – F Minor

  13 lento – F♯ Major

  8 molto agitato – F♯ Minor

  3 vivace –G Major

  22 molto agitato – G Minor

  17 allegretto – A♭ Major

  12 presto – A♭ Minor

  7 andantino – A Major

  2 lento – A Minor

  21 cantabile – B♭ Major

  16 presto con fuoco – B♭ Minor

  11 vivace – B Major

  6 lento assai – B Minor

  Sonnets

  A Minor

  1

  Knock, bang, clang against

  the retentive stillness of the wood.

  The shapes fall away from the core,

  the thing becomes a thing.

  2

  What comes so often never

  comes as something new, the mind

  perceiving only what it conceives, the mind

  always behind itself, as I am behind you.

  3

  Even the plants die only

  after death, brittleness and brown

  clinging to that former condition.

  The trees are now black, yet water

  finds the ground at those roots, still

  good, but too late.

  B♭ Major

  1

  The thrill of it all, setting sail,

  years away, might as well deliver

  the letters ourselves upon return, icy letters

  soaked with, overwhelmed with blood.

  2

  We project deities onto the night

  sky, drawings of mammals in the stars,

  sketches of crabs, of scorpions

  because they scare us.

  3

  We are the lot that would be explorers,

  if the night wouldn’t fall so dark,

  if the ice storms would turn in

  on themselves, behave as we would behave,

  if we had the trades behind us,

  understanding our prayers.

  F♯ Major

  1

  Call me to some day that is yours,

  that refuses to resist your counting,

  as near as the bark of dogs and trees,

  but again and again coming round.

  2

  When I believe finally that I am grasping

  it, it lets go and withdraws what is most yours.

  I am rendered free, dismissed, where

  the thought of us had once been welcomed.

  3

  I hold as if for both of us, waiting,

  too old for what is too young, too young

  for what has yet to be.

  We, quiet the minutes, the day,

  At last the branch and bough, the sweet

  wind pushing us, as time.

  G Major

  1

  What comes, comes, fortune notwithstanding,

  standing with the glorious overflowings

  of fate and stone and parapets where,

  until now, we have not stood.

  2

  Brave bells ring through the mornings,

  bang against the dull, uninspired hillsides,

  column after column of living marble,

  marking limits of this temple.

  3

  Today we will eat more than we have,

  but only in a hurry, out of boredom,

  the night falling only to await the bells.

  Some kind of dark frenzy, traces,

  curves a flight toward daybreak,

  toward us, perhaps only as thought.

  E♭ Minor

  1

  Pour this garden into a glass, while

  explaining to me the difference between a creek

  and a stream, an ocean and a sea,

  a lie and a confession of love.

  2

  Consort with the airs I do not wear,

  with endless stories I have not told,

  between blossoming branches and dead wood.

  Befriend the wind.

  3

  Resist the belief that we understand

  any hard rain that washes clean exterior

  walls and the hooves of horses.

  Whatever is purely tactical,

  is what we should, ought, can, will

  do. The rain still filling some glass.

  A♭ Major

  1

  Someone, a child for example, will pause

  and ask you a question. You will not know the answer,

  and that’s all right, that’s all right,

  that will forever, ever, be all right.

  2

  What is measured is not always what

  is spanned, is not ever was is lost, is

  always what is required for belief,

  for peace, for extinguishing fire.

  3

  Nowhere is far, everywhere is far,

  a circle, like a dish, a disc, like

  that child’s question

  Circling, circling, circling,

  circling a radius never spanned, measured

  only by a notion of distance.

  G Minor

  1

  All vivid, your creatures. Can we imagine?

  Can we imagine? Those little chairs

  piled against doors, those little tongues piled

  on top of anxious silence.

  2

  Jacketed, round, round, round,

  blunt and sharp pain, blunt and

  sharp sound: walls between in there

  and out there, like lessons on a

  3

  board that bears names. At what age do we

  trim our own nails, and how many

  of us remember that first time?

  Last words always sound like

  last words always sound like last

  words always sound like this.

  E Minor

  1

  I am on intimate terms with stellar

  tides, said the bear that would have chased me.

  I am no bleak wind, I am a gaiety of

  flowers, said that bear, grizzly brown

  2

  bear, like a remembered tree,

  A bush outside a house where I lived

  when I was a child, in the garden

  of my youth, of my innocence, that

  3

  bear, clothed and delicately perfect,

  almost frail in his perfection, as a bear

  must be, a bear so intimate

  with the stellar tides, throat a flash

  with exposure, open and eager for

  expression, impression, the giving.

  C♯ Minor
  1

  These dancers transpose. There is no

  other way to stay in step. The dancers

  sign their names in time, with time. They

  are dancers after all, after all

  2

  is said and done, after all is

  leapt and bounded, unbounded and

  taken for granted like a mule that

  always pulls, always takes his pack.

  3

  These dancers, all twisted up,

  without meaning to fold this way and

  that on this moving surface

  These dancers: we love them, we

  hate them, watch as the tie rhythm to

  key to motion to dawn and dusk.

  B Major

  1

  We are but shades, rocks, trees,

  shades of death, the rock, the trees,

  shadows and small men, shadows and

  that ammonia smell burning the air.

  2

  Shades drawn against the last efforts

  of gardeners who come when they want

  to come when the plants are already dying,

  when the water has been left on.

  3

  But we are shadows, we are but shadows,

  pencil shaded darker than midday,

  ball erased lighter than midnight.

  The point being, the meaning pointing

  to calm summers and memories

  of jealousy and hunger.

  E♭ Major

  1

  A sad and great evil is among us,

  lapping at water we have poured for the dogs.

  Twist the end of my tie and make me wear clothes that

  would have fit me in another era.

  2

  A blank and gray history is between us,

  folding like a map with countries that

  no longer exist, that no longer have governments,

  but only confused people once citizens.

  3

  They ride bicycles back and back,

  there being no forth, their tires needing

  air, their brake cables needing grease.

  All the hills are up, all the puddles are oceans,

  all the children are old and the dreams, well,

  the dreams remain dreams.

  D Major

  1

  In the trampled meadow of our poverty,

  some of us can find no clover at all. Some

  of us ache and twist at the ends of heat waves,

  writhe and bleed, lanced by rays of sunshine.

  2

  Tweedle Dee did what Tweedle did done,

  a dumb thing to do, it was agreed. Build a house

  of straw on Paradise Street for a pretty

  young damsel chanced for to meet.

  3

  Yardarm to yardarm on the street, in the

  river bed where graffiti recites the lyrics,

  where homes still shape with pride.

  Give me some counter and share with

  the walls, yay hay, blow the man down,

  trampled in that uneven field.

  F Minor

  1

  God signs to us every morning, points

  to his own chest with his thumb and shakes

  his mountainous head, his pinky points upward

  though there is to up beyond it.

  2

  A gang sign from a gang with no members,

  a null set, a null gang, a naive set theory

  set to accept and negate any contradiction

  tosses, necessarily, his celestial way.

  3

  In this, the last universe of discourse,

  the axioms fall like flies, if flies would

  fall, if flies would fly away

  into some thumb-pointing deity’s

  universe of chest, that pinky, that pinky,

  upward-turned into a slice of infinity.

  A♭ Minor

  1

  The fountain in the village is like a

  mouth. It opens wide to spread gossip that

  no one will believe. Why would we?

  The fountain is a liar.

  2

  But it springs from the throat of the town,

  its foundation resting on our lungs, its

  words channeled from our old shit, shit

  we will not relinquish, still the

  3

  fountain is a liar, its water in color

  just a little off, the tinge of the odor

  of eggs. Eggs? Yes, eggs.

  The fountain tells the truth while it

  lies, that is its lie, its big scary lie, that

  its lie is true about the truth of its lying.

  E Major

  1

  The rose I planted in that corner is faithful

  to the soil that supports it, to the soil

  that feels nothing for it, as the soil dries as

  fast as it can for the cruel sun.

  2

  The rose I planted against that fence, has

  flat red flowers, like a tough wild rose, like

  a bizarre fried blood-egg, the yolk of it

  open to the business of bees.

  3

  You take your chances when you praise

  a convert, convince him you swim in some

  common deep. A trench.

  Almost all things want to float,

  dead bodies want to float, even dying

  bees that have been open for business.

  F♯ Minor

  1

  Some boastful thing eludes me in

  this night that is only this day’s extension.

  The night is not special, not rare and

  proper like it claims, postures.

  2

  No night has two sides, two sides has

  no night. When you told me you were sick

  I didn’t believe you and then of course,

  of course I did.

  3

  When they told me you were dead

  I didn’t believe them, and I didn’t and

  I didn’t and I didn’t

  I did when you told me. When you

  told me you were dead I believed you.

  Even then I had my doubts.

  C Minor

  1

  Still hunting requires patience, quiet, and,

  above all else, prey. How long is the rule of

  death? How long is a moment? Time still hunts

  us, does it not? In this stew of motion.

  2

  As if by some whistle signal they let us in,

  Let us hang around like possible members or

  definite victims. A reminiscence must be,

  necessarily, as long as the event remembered.

  3

  Conjure and construct, you told me

  while we waited in our blind, laughed when

  we imagined a blind that afforded

  no sight of our prey, fleeting at best,

  shifting, pushing, crawling, spiraling into

  view, into range, into focus, then gone.

  B Minor

  1

  It is hotter today than it will be in your journal.

  You have a habit for, shall we call it, contraction?

  For you the falls is but a riffle, the swarm is but a hive,

  the truth is but a set of contingent statements.

  2

  That is no river at all if it cannot be crossed,

  you said, the bridge a twist of useless beams,

  and like ants they made busy in the trees on the

  other side, the side we wanted, needed.

  3

  Wandering sorrow is nothing but death,

  an invitation to a party with no music, a hike

  with no trail, no vantage points, no high ground.

  High ground was overrated, you said,

  But what would you write in your journal? High

  is merely surface, surface clear to the bottom.

  D Minor

  1

  She is far more resolute than the man who cuts stone.

  Less lovely than the sunrise, but enough,

  enough for birds to pause, break song, the machine of it all,

  wound so tightly that springs complain.

  2

  The man who tanned the hides also sewed the sails,

  just below that bodega where the little boy cried all

  the time. I met you there when it was raining; you

  pretended to not know me.

  3

  Who will be the night soil man, the night soil man,

  the night soil man? Who will be the night soil

  man, square bucket in his hand.

  We laughed at songs like that, always fun

 

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