Sonnet (When through supreme activity)

When through supreme activity's dull hum

You feel the thudding sputter of despair,

Like solemn poundings of a savage drum

Foreboding death in sordid thoroughfare

Or hostile haunt -- a sobbing, glum lament --

A stirring, whirring drug that funnels clouds

Of siddy pitch where glamorous clouds were spent;

When stumbling, mumbling, blundering blind crowds

Have hissed the surging sculpture that your brain

Has wrought, travailed -- remember while thus prone

To anguished earth, while suffering's tortured strain

Bowling your shoulders into muck -- alone --

The very earth in stolid throe has thought,

And Love paid Death the ransom that it sought.

Evelyn Coffey