You Will Grow Old - A Sonnet

I'm encouraging my Writer's Craft class write sonnets today. OK, I'm forcing them to write sonnets. They resist the strictures of structures. They chafe at the yoke of Iambic Pentameter. They know the obligation to rhyme is an opportunity to be lazy and say dumb things, yet they say dumb things anyhow, just to be done. 


Why am I making them do this? It's an effort to sensitize them to the music of language. It's an effort to get them to see art as a complex but rewarding game. It's an effort to get them outside of the comfort of free verse, to acquire some internal sense of discipline that they can bring back to their freedom. Because without a sense of purpose, "freedom" is just another word for "lost."


In fairness, I thought I'd better write a sonnet of my own--it's been a while. So here it is. 

you will grow old

you will grow old, and one by one will fade
the words to songs that stirred you in your youth;
the things you rage against will become truths
too big to contemplate. you will get paid

to do a job which you suspect consumes
the day, the soul, the world that moves through time
and gives you nothing in return. the crime
is that you will accept your empty rooms

as inevitable. your children will
abandon you. the swimming pool will rot.
the unpruned trees will die. your secret plot
to find the bastards one by one and kill

them all will be reduced, in time, to bland 

and acquiescent wringing of your hands.