I
This mystic draw, these pangs I feel for you—
Are they mere sparks, the scent of pheromones,
Complex reactions deep within our bones
Compelling what transpires between us two?
Or is it something science never knew,
Unreached by every method it condones,
The greatest of its myriad unknowns,
Yet which its wiles cannot deny is true?
The latter! This strange force we call our love.
Is more complex and powerful by far
Than any fact of biochemistry,
Yet just as real. Its ecstasy hints of
Things far beyond what science says there are—
At once fate, miracle, and mystery!
II
Is it just thrust and throb of passion’s throes,
The panting palpitations of rapt breasts—
Or are they mere expression that attests
Joint destiny some force outside us chose?
Does it surge from the depths as Etna blows,
A fire that bursts and dies but never rests—
Or rise like snow-clad Himalayan crests,
Beyond all pangs and pain, desires and woes?
My senses speak first, say the first is true,
For my own body tells me to deny
The ecstasy, you brought it, is to lie;
Then reason speaks and says the latter, too,
Describes our love, for once the body’s fire
Is quenched, your soul evokes a pure desire.
VI
The night is our domain; here we hold sway,
Each other’s monarchs, joint and absolute,
With no liege but each other to salute,
Free from the bonds imposed by tyrant day,
Each sovereign, each holding each at bay.
In shade and starlight, all else fallen mute,
We give each to the other and transmute
This night into a world we shape our way.
The ecstasy of our nocturnal reign
Embraces all, leaves nothing but to spurn
False worldly crowns and honor in their place
One subject—she who also is my queen;
One law—to love and be loved in return;
One realm—two souls unbound by time or space.
VII
I am the sun, the orb that flames aloft,
Intently coursing, measuring the days,
Intense with white-hot, omnipresent blaze,
That blinds and sears when the clouds’ cloak is doffed.
You are the moon. Your orb glows silver, soft,
Mysterious in your ever-changing ways.
You know day, but night’s darkness best displays
Your muted beauty that enchants so oft.
Yet when our paths cross, all my fiery power
Cannot withstand the passage of your form;
It overcomes my fires, consumes my day.
The heavens darken as the midnight hour,
To veil our union, in which we transform
Time, space, and heaven in our interplay.
Adam Sedia (b. 1984) lives in his native Northwest Indiana and practices law as a civil and appellate litigator. He has published four books of poetry and his poems, essays, and fiction have appeared in various literary journals. He is also a composer, and his musical works may be heard on his YouTube channel.
Adam, these are passionate poems beautifully written that provocatively portray that love is something mystical and magnificent beyond “biochemistry” and mere carnal desire.
Adam, I could not love these sonnets more. Absolutely beautiful, perfect, superb, superior, exactly what a sonnet should be. Four of the best sonnets I have ever had the pleasure to read and know.
The enumeration indicates that these are part of a longer sequence — surely a very intense and passionate one, in accord with the older tradition of sonneteering.
Notice that in the octets of the first two, Sedia uses his ABBA quatrains to ask questions, which are then answered in the following sestets. In the full sequence, this may be part of the overall narrative plan. He composes each of the quatrains as a single, complete sentence, and thereby makes possible a very strong volta.
Sonnet VI and VII are different — they describe the love of the speaker and the addressee in two different figures: royalty in VI, and moon and sun in VII. These two sonnets are descriptive and celebrational, while the first two are inquisitive and analytical.
It would be interesting to know how long this sequence is. In many sonnet sequences, the range of approach is varied: celebrating, praising, questioning, arguing, fighting, doubting, worrying, and even insulting. These four sonnets are totally wrapped up in the ecstasy of love, and I wonder if Sedia’s entire sequence shows other possible reactions and feelings.
I imagine, Adam, the sequence may have many sonnets still unwritten and yet to come. The ones here, perhaps, are those stabilized enough to be circulated. Very much enjoyed by me as a scholar of the genre. In fact, these, with the sonnets published by James Tweedie a few days ago, provide further fascinating examples of the love sequence as a genre seriously practiced by contemporary poets. Your first poem corresponds to many sonnets opening a love sequence by philosophical questions about love’s nature. You answer that your love is as real as the physical body, and yet superior to it. Four or five hundred years ago, the poet might have referred to “beauty and virtue” in answering the question. In your second sonnet, you again take a classic philosophical approach in answering your question first by (physical) senses and then by (intellectual) reason. However, you proceed beyond body and mind in reference to the soul, which is a topic that develops in the third sonnet presented here. That third sonnet first seems to be a “night” poem–but hardly a descriptive one. The theme is really the mutual sovereignty of two souls joined by love–over a realm that is “night” rather than day because it is fully realized and better understood as a darkness that is neither time nor space. In the fourth sonnet, you differentiate male and female as sun and moon–which does happen in some traditional sonnet sequences, though in many the sun image is assigned to the woman as giver of life and warmth to the lover. But in those, the moon never appears in the same poem. Your work is unique because I think you’re referring to a solar eclipse in which the moon can effectively darken the day on earth by blocking the light of the sun. Your sestet, when “paths cross,” uses the unusual occurrence of the eclipse to claim transcendent power over the heavens themselves that can be achieved by the union of man and woman represented by sun and moon. This is new in the thousands of sonnets I’ve read. Look forward to more as your collection of sonnets increases!
Breathtaking and enchanting!
Dearest Adam,
I fell upon this site tonight. Your poem is esquite. It is one of the most beautiful encounters of poetry I have ever laid my eye upon. It is tremendously breathtaking and it moved my spirit to soar and rise into belief again that which has been hidden , locked away, taken from me and torn apart.