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[Signor Francesco Petrarca is a little indisposed today]

Another Sonnet? Oh my sainted aunt!
To Spring, they say? Surely we have enough?
Don’t bookshelves bristle with that wretched stuff?
I’m absent in Bologna! Simply can’t!

All there’s to say on Spring, compose or chant,
Exists already, finely-honed or rough.
That seam’s worked out. Excuse my sounding gruff,
But poets have to write what people want.

I’m not against the Spring: I’m no curmudgeon.
I’ve done as much to greet the Primavera
As any young pen-pusher in the place,

But now I’m crabbed, dyspeptic, prone to dudgeon,
My bursts of inspiration getting rarer -
Silent upon my peak in cyberspace!

© Colin Bailey, April 2009