March 2015
I’m a recent (and very grateful!) Guggenheim fellow and the author of eighteen books, including five collections of poetry, the two most recent being Psalter and “Bocage” and Other Sonnets (recipient of the X.J. Kennedy Poetry Prize). My other books include Luís de Camões: Selected Sonnets; The Ballad Rode into Town; and The Unfortunates (recipient of the T.S. Eliot Award). I’m a former Fulbright (in Portugal) and the recipient of an NEA Creative Writing Fellowship. My next book, Love Sonnets, is forthcoming from Kelsay Press later this year. My website: http://williambaer.net
Love
(I Corinthians 13:13)
If I have not love, I’m but a hollow sound,
a tinkling cymbal destined to fade and fall,
and though my faith might move the mountains around,
still, without love, I’m nothing at all.
For love is patient, love is kind,
it’s never vain, ambitious, or uncouth,
it’s never coarse, it’s soft, refined,
for love rejoices in the truth.
Love thinks no evil, it thinks no wrong,
it hopes, believes, endures, prevails,
love envieth not, it suffereth long,
it never turns, it never fails.
Have love, have faith, have hope, again and again,
but love is the greatest of these. Amen.
From Psalter: A Sequence of Catholic Sonnets (Truman State University Press, 2011).
(I Corinthians 13:13)
If I have not love, I’m but a hollow sound,
a tinkling cymbal destined to fade and fall,
and though my faith might move the mountains around,
still, without love, I’m nothing at all.
For love is patient, love is kind,
it’s never vain, ambitious, or uncouth,
it’s never coarse, it’s soft, refined,
for love rejoices in the truth.
Love thinks no evil, it thinks no wrong,
it hopes, believes, endures, prevails,
love envieth not, it suffereth long,
it never turns, it never fails.
Have love, have faith, have hope, again and again,
but love is the greatest of these. Amen.
From Psalter: A Sequence of Catholic Sonnets (Truman State University Press, 2011).
©2015 William Baer