Beauty and Foreboding

One day the Earth in paroxysm cleaved,
and Aphrodite in her beauty shook.
She didn’t know if it could be believed,
this rending of the land by placid brook.

She knew that war in Heaven had its place,
for high above whole galaxies explode.
The Earth sees not the ravages of space,
yet now ‘twas chasm where the water flowed.

Such beauty lost when Earth is split in two;
it was as if the heavens made Earth sore.
She climbed the tree to get a better view,
but what she saw frightened her even more.

Then Aphrodite, shaken, shed a tear:
so much on this blue world engenders fear.


14 Lines (Shakespearean Sonnet)
Writer’s Cramp
3-22-16