The Sonnets to Orpheus: Book 2: 13
The Sonnets to Orpheus: Book 2: 13 - form Summary
Imperative Sonnet as Transformation
This sonnet uses the tightened sonnet form to deliver a succession of imperative commands urging the speaker (and reader) to reframe loss as creative survival. Short, paradoxical injunctions—be ahead of parting, be dead in Eurydice, be the shattering cup—compress spiritual advice into a single sustained address. The compact form intensifies the moral urgency, making the poem feel like a litany that converts mourning into affirmative, artistic assent.
Read Complete AnalysesBe ahead of all parting, as though it already were behind you, like the winter that has just gone by. For among these winters there is one so endlessly winter that only by wintering through it all will your heart survive. Be forever dead in Eurydice-more gladly arise into the seamless life proclaimed in your song. Here, in the realm of decline, among momentary days, be the crystal cup that shattered even as it rang. Be-and yet know the great void where all things begin, the infinite source of your own most intense vibration, so that, this once, you may give it your perfect assent. To all that is used-up, and to all the muffled and dumb creatures in the world's full reserve, the unsayable sums, joyfully add yourself, and cancel the count.
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