These sonnets of mine were published in Telicom, The

                                 Journal of the International Society for Philosophical

                                 Enquiry (ISPE), so they may have some value. The first won

                                  second prize for the year 2006 in ISPE’s annual poetry contest.

                                                             CRESSIDA (1955)

She wears a falseface painted to conceal

The passion that unmasking might reveal.

No wintry flush do her cheeks feel;

Her blushes are the flow of warmer tides.

A soft and yielding surface sometimes hides

A hard unbending core of disguised steel.

The grooving fissures open wide and seal,

Moving unmoved, as a long slow glacier slides.

She bears love’s bruises on her body only,

And still refuses to believe her act

Was but a woman’s wayward whim, a lonely

Facing of falsehood, turning her back on fact.

   She smiles through tears, and frowns with laughing eyes;

   She lies with truth, and tells the truth with lies.

                     DARK LADY (1958)

I stand unseen within my new love’s sight;

She knows me not when I am by her side.

The demure censor who is her constant guide

Allows no meeting of our eyes in flight.

I have lost my senses! I have no reason or right

To see, touch, hear, or smell what I am denied,

Yet would I want her for a second bride–

Her skin is tarnished but her beauty’s bright.

Darkness is good for love. They say in Hell

An infinite variety of joy

Once lay in dusky Cleopatra’s power.

I’d know it all, could I but briefly dwell

Within the realm of those reigning eyes, and annoy

Her censor to distraction for an hour.