Richard Vallance
Richard Vallance is an internationally known Canadian author, poet and editor who publishes several online poetry e-zines and Sonnetto Poesia, a publication dedicated to the espousal of the sonnet form in poetry, modern and traditional, and he publishes the "Vallance Review", dealing primarily with sonnets as well.   Richard is also the Chairperson for the Canadian Poetry Association.    Richard can be contacted at this e-mail, for submissions:   vallance22@30gigs.com .   

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Allow Your Eyes

Allow your eyes to play in their own rhythms.
It's all about those flowers now and always was:
These flowers in our market stalls appeal to you,
appeal to me as well; so allow me,
if you will, may I offer you a few of them?
I know you will.   Remember, by the sea,
in Conception Bay, all the wild roses there?
You do?  I do.  The scene, as cool as fair
lingers on in our minds, and always will,
as long as flowers every generation
revivify themselves in adoration
before our May Dayed eyes, until such Time
as Death should do us part, my shadow friend,
and lilies lay prayers on our biers, end to end.

© by Richard Vallance 2005

C
Dear Cold Night in July


Dear cold night in July,
I've not seen the like for years:
when rain arrives to play
for hours wearing our tears
from rooftops into eaves,
each tear a strain to rain
too silver on green leaves,
your memories our bane
poured into your green sleeves,
no rhyme or reason why.

Before such rains drift on
can we declare their cure
before dawn's clouds are gone
or will blue eyes allure
be sun's on our lean willows
or ours on our down pillows?


© by Richard Vallance, 2003 & 2005


July 12th., 2003





Ghosts


For John Keats, and his incisive sonnet,
"Written in Disgust of Vulgar Superstition"

    Surely the mind of man is closely bound
    In some black spell; seeing that each one tears
    Himself from fireside joys, and Lydian airs,...


Were you as haunted by the soul as life
had haunted me?  Still are you?  What's the excuse?
You say I see, "... My childhood days were rife
with throttled love and long-on-tooth abuse
so endured!"  Thus our hardened victim's keen
to traumatize the mind, and well before
she must ghosts let out she'll have heard unseen,
locked down beneath her cellar's banged-shut door!
Why so?  Don't ask me.   You I never knew,
although be sure I stumbled on those keys
that unlocked my own, where long cobwebs grew
and spiders crawled with unapparent ease.
    Why cellars yield to keys, the secret's out:
    invite ghosts up.  And learn what you're about.


© by Richard Vallance 2004


January 22 2004 (2:30 a.m.)


_____________________________________ 
6


Oh My Tigress, Lithe and Free

after William Blake, "Tyger, Tyger, burning bright!"

for my little night wanderer,
Argentée ("Silvery"), age 18 months

1

Oh my Tigress, lithe and free,
in what moonlight by your tree,
What light wells beyond our days
in your eyes where starlight strays?

2

Through what playgrounds must we run,
In the absence of our sun?
What immortalizes you,
in your dusk's Cimmerian blue?

3

By what spryness, by what flight
could your sinews so alight
on every spruce your forepaws clasp,
where your cat's blood's coursed to grasp?

4

Blurry!  Flurry!  Where's there strain
in your calculating brain?
What dread tree trunk, what rough bark
dare restrain you from a lark?

5

As all the stars smile down on you,
pray tell how they well up through
that silver ocean in your eyes,
scaling down our seas to size?

6

Oh my Tigress, lithe and free,
in what starlight by your tree,
What light wells beyond our days
in your eyes where moonlight strays?


© by Richard Vallance 2004

September 4 2004

_____________________________________ 


Persephone, What Prayer

for Rainer Maria Rilke

Persephone, what prayer do I hear you pray,
as the god of the netherworld sweeps you away?

Orpheus, if as of winter you
once lost Persephone, pray, I ask you once,
why this low lament?
Tracing themselves in foam as long as blue,
the waves rush hush against the shore
where I also hear alone
your lyre's strains as though
you might have saved Persephone
from Hades' shadowed halls,
and you too
might have redeemed her long sad soul
from November's realms.
If, on this dusky shoal
hard by the roaring Aegean
you may have glimpsed there wash,
though only once, one trillium in autumn,
if you will have watched it still
afloat, though shriveling fast,
if now the frosted surf will not
as yet have gone and claimed it on the Aegean's bier,
will not have madly quashed
her corset's bloom too fair,
fallen from Persephone's bosom,
will it have really blossomed out of season?
Orpheus, I see no reason.

Come then, lyricist, and clasp your young bride's veil,
where with April's bowers you both laugh to your avail.


© by Richard Vallance 1972 & 2005
(composed at the age of 27)

_____________________________________

10

Wuthering Heights


  Off Wuthering Heights rains race west again,
Their mists memorials to whose pelted past? --
The manse oak ashen, or its tenants slain,
  Over whose graves alone cold moons were cast?

  Was this Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights?
Were Catherine and Heathcliffe truants here,
Their passions as fierce as their wild delights,
  Their jealousies inflamed by kinsmen's fear?

  What was their sin in lieu, or lore?   How will
These howling winds rekindle passion's fire,
Or shall their shambled ruins stab a chill
  Through you as you flee their phantasmic ire? 

You shan't skulk by!  Those ghosts you loudly hear? --
Their passions singe your blood, your wildest fear!


© by Richard Vallance 2005


April 25 & 28, May 6 2005 & June 8 2005