Another Kind of Love – a sonata poem

 

I Allegro Amabile

Shakespeare denies that love can be love
which alters when it alteration finds.
Experience informs me otherwise.
That first euphoric flurry
bears us onward in impetuosity
from first encounter
through exploration,
discovery,
exposed illusion.
Ephemeral glory
but love for all that.

II Allegro Appassionato-Sostenuto-Tempo I

Stormy transition morphs to humdrum
climbs to summit and back again –
swell to great with crashing chords
in clashes of divergent moods;
slides subtly through moderato
via pause and repeat to gentle
understanding. Calm acceptance
rules resurgence of passion
to tenderness and back again –
another kind of love.

III Andante con Moto – Allegro

Another kind of love – despite of wrinkles
this thy golden time –
all passion not quite spent,
progression from hectic,
through stately to exciting
and back again.
Togetherness a bulwark
against worldly pressure
to ripening harvest of creative pleasure
as time accelerates towards conclusion.
Another kind of love.

Phoenix Rising suggests we use the words of another poet as inspiration, title or first line.  I have gone further with this poem which was written a couple of years ago.

Based on Brahms Sonata Op.120 No.2 for clarinet and piano. The music, which is some of the most difficult I have ever played, is full of passion tempered with calm passages.  My thoughts turned to marriage and its evolution.  The first section quotes from Shakespeare, Sonnet CXVII, and the last from Sonnet III.  Swell to Great is a coupler on a pipe organ, linking two big pipes to produce a thunderous sound.  My poem echoes in part the cadence of the music, with rather too many mixed metaphors, but so be it.