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On hearing your sonnets at Stratford, 7 January

It really isn't fair that after years

Of writing sonnets - some of them not bad -

I feel as though I might as well give up.

Faced with what you wrote, I must be mad

To hope that anything I might put down

Could hold a candle to your lightest line

And what I think profound will simply be

Iambic doggerel, nowhere near sublime.

And yet, and yet my heart is made like yours

As liable to vagaries of mood

Or temper, while my mind is as aware

Of failure and stupidity as of good.

          So when I read your sonnets, why am I

          Struck dumb, feeling I dare not even try?

Brian Hick January 2011

©copyright Sally Hick 4.1.23