Michael Diehl, El Capitan
My Father and the Sphinx Or,
(Once Upon a Time In Ancient Egypt)
I’ll bet the Sphinx was utile in its day,
When Bob, whose average span was 40 years,
Could see it and feel better, straight away
More up for quick existence, stricken peers.
I’ll bet it praised his backbone, and he stood
Up straighter, rising in the orange sky;
I’ll bet when he looked west, his neighborhood
Looked drabber, and he backtracked with a sigh,
And died ground down, but holding in his head
The yea he felt the day he saw the Sphinx,
Because the rest–the toil, the beer and bread,
The joyless thoughts nobody special thinks–
Could never have upraised him in his place
To share the Sphinx’s blank and stony face.
_____________
Steve Hatfield
Review by J.S. Absher
This Shakespearean sonnet is beautifully done. The occasion is a little mysterious—how or where the father encountered the Sphinx is not explained—but its effect is profound. The poem effectively employs anaphora (ll. 1, 5, and 7) and possible allusions to Carlyle’s “everlasting yea” (l. 10) and to E. A. Robinson’s “Richard Cory,” in “the toil, the beer and bread, / The joyless thoughts…” (ll. 11-12). The allusion at the end, to the sphinx in Yeats’s “Second Coming,” is unmistakable but is earned and feels fresh. The iambic pentameter lines are skillful, both muscular and musical. There are many memorable lines here, for example, he “died ground down, but holding in his head / The yea he felt the day he saw the Sphinx.”