A Crown of Sonnets is a sequence of fifteen poems where the last line of each becomes the first line of the next, with the final poem consisting of the first line of each sonnet in turn. These sonnets are a sort of theme and variation, all picking up on ideas of what is seen and unseen, known and unknown, visible and hidden. The initial inspiration came from reading the novel What We Can Know by Ian McEwan, which is about a Crown of Sonnets that is lost and passes into legend. Reading this book while camping in the Forest of Dean and watching the solar eclipse of 2026 provided the spark for the following work.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
I – Stars
We lie out on the grass beneath the stars,
Clinging tightly as the planet spins.
Below, the porous sky offers (at last)
a respite from the heat. Above, our skin
is prickled with the residue of day-
time’s jollities, vacation’s dusty sheen
that lingers long beyond the act of play,
and fills the heart with treasures pure and clean.
Darkness deepens. Galaxies emerge.
First distant pinpricks then, with time, our own,
as you, and I, and air, and grass converge –
minuscule beneath this vast unknown.
Yet, as we watch, the vastness shrinks, ’till now
the plough is buried handle deep in cloud.
II – Plough
The plough is buried handle deep. In cloud
of thought I absent mindedly attempt
to raise its rusted frame but it has vowed,
like Arthur’s fabled sword, it will prevent
my hollow efforts. I move down the lane
towards the holy place where I am staying –
humility where opulence once reigned,
I join St Francis’ brothers in their praying.
This is my first time here among these men
and yet their words rest easy on my tongue.
They resonate with all those past Amens
in many places – local and far flung –
that give shape to the world and now transfigure
time, and all that ought to feel familiar.
III – Eclipse
All that ought to feel familiar
is turned upon its head as, in the sky,
the sun begins to darken, there’s a chill here –
unseasonal, perhaps, but not surprising.
The daytime moon has turned her back – her gaze,
like ours, is focused wholly on the sun
and, as she slowly blocks our view, today’s
eclipse is safely stored for years to come
in memories and photo reels. And yet
what makes this moment memorable, it seems,
is not what we can see, that coronet
of light, but rather what becomes unseen.
Our brightest, closest star, that shines so proud
is, as we watch, concealed within its shroud.
IV – Truth
While we watch, concealed within its shroud,
the truth is in a battle for its soul.
As quiet, hard won expertise is drowned
by louder voices shouting for control,
and slow, reflective honesty is left
behind by endless novelty that cares
for little but its own relentless theft
of real life in pursuit of likes and shares.
If you don’t like the facts then choose your own!
If history’s unhelpful just forget!
If you prefer your evidence homegrown
then that’s ok, it’s up to you! And yet,
while we debate the truth’s right to existence,
wildfire smoke is rising in the distance.
V – Smoke
The wildfire smoke is rising in the distance,
shadowing the corners of the mind
and voicing with liturgical insistence
its litany, blood red on the horizon.
The buzzards circle watchfully above us,
the jackdaws vesper in the library’s eaves
as this day’s long lament joins countless others
blanketing the earth like Autumn leaves.
The wizened, fearful trees waiting their blazing,
The drought-scoured land dismantled by a gust,
bear sacramental witness to our cravings
and remind us that we too are ash and dust.
Can we avert our eyes from nature’s glare
as the gravity of grief hangs in the air?
VI – Robin
The gravity of grief hangs in the air,
the gathered few stand quietly around
listening as the usual time-worn prayers
accompany her journey to the ground.
Eyes, reddened by the memory of absence,
are caught by movement in a nearby tree –
a flickering of bloodshot feathers, dancing
with spirit-filled abandonment. This free
display of joy brings smiles to sorrowed faces
and hope to hearts held captive by distress.
In Heaven’s great economy of graces
the Robin – comforter-in-chief – is blessed.
When grief’s deep darkness threatens to eclipse us,
to lift our eyes beyond is our resistance.
VII – Beyond
To lift our eyes beyond is our resistance.
To shine more brightly when the shadows swell.
To face up to injustice with persistence.
To do the small things and to do them well.
To seek the sacred image in a stranger.
To hold the weary silence of a friend.
To reach across divides despite the danger.
To set off without knowing how it ends.
To paint a picture for a loved one’s pleasure.
To write a poem for your own delight.
To make the world more beautiful is treasure
that lifts our eyes beyond the darkest night
and helps us see through others eyes and cares,
reminding us of all that we still share.
VIII – Candle
Reminding us of all that we still share,
a single candle flickers by the wall
lit by an unknown hand. The dampening air
of early Autumn rises and then falls
around its brittle warmth. I wonder who
entered this ancient place today and why?
What sorrow, anxiousness, or gratitude
led them to leave behind this guttering light?
And where did they go next? What did they face
beyond those wooden doors? I hope they found
what they were looking for, the strength, the grace
to carry them beyond this holy ground.
What we hold in the light can be endured,
but what is lost, in memory is obscured.
IX – Forgotten
What is lost in memory – obscured
by time’s incessant impetus that winds
the present, past, and future up in cords
of gossamer and starlight, holding minds
in captive thrall to those few winding threads
that steal the right to tell us how things are,
discarding all those footnotes left unsaid
for so long that they cease to be regarded –
is there beneath the pelt of what’s remembered,
another world still hidden in plain sight,
a story told in buried charcoal embers,
in standing stones and constellations light-
years wide, in Grey Hair-Grass and Sphagnum Mosses,
in local place names etched into our maps,
it’s shrouded in obscure lexical glosses
and chanted over skipping ropes and claps,
truths that weave through earth’s long tapestry
beyond all that our fleeting eyes can see.
X – Lighthouse
Beyond all that our fleeting eyes can see
the distant lighthouse watches from its cliff,
standing firm against the trickery,
the shifting, metamorphic lies, where rifts
and outcrops rise and fall, where dangers lurk
for vessels passing through those Scyllan straits
and as each ship arrives it gets to work,
illumining the dangers that await
while we, in landlocked safety, pay no mind
to those far fractile edges of the land,
their wild igneous columns and skewed lines
of sedimental strata. Understand
that what we do not see, what we ignore
is, even now, the rock that keeps us moored.
XI – Lithos
Even now, the rock that keeps us moored
is lying where an angry Giant threw it.
The Lightning Stone (of this we are assured
by local legend so we know it’s true) sits
mossed and mottled deep within the woods
like some great Incan artefact. The trees
have cloaked it all around with ligneous hood,
while passers by pass by and do not see.
And yet this boulder (so the story goes)
is all that holds together earth and sky:
The light shines in the undergrowth, and so
the winter’s creeping darkness is defied.
Such forgotten tales can surely be
the hope that binds us to reality.
XII – Reality
The hope that binds us to reality
is found in the most ordinary places.
In craggy-raftered pubs and rickety
old village halls, community centre basements,
back room cafés, steam train-sooted churches,
beneath the flickering fluorescent lights
of tower blocks, on huddled up park benches,
in any place where people still delight
in meeting up together. This is what
is real, not artificial, not a trace
of algorithmic pressure, just a spot
where two or three are gathered face to face.
Side by side we breathe night’s hope-filled air
while we gaze on galaxies afar.
XIII – Galaxies
As we gaze on galaxies afar,
their light falling like drifts of Easter snow
upon our waiting retinas, we are
time travellers, adventurers. We go
a hundred thousand years or more beyond
the reach of our quotidian demands,
leaving present cares behind, absconding
from this little world. There’s something grand
in stepping in the blinking of an eye
into the distant past, to be the end,
the terminus, of a photon’s epic flight
across the universe. So we attend
with care to heaven’s fragile falling shards,
our hearts still gladdened by the shooting stars.
XIV – Statue
Hearts still gladdened by the shooting stars,
hand in hand we set off past the tents –
our temporary lodgings – past the cars,
past outlawed barbeques emitting scents
of now forbidden charcoal, through the gate
past dog bags hanging like some gruesome warning
to those who enter here, beneath the great
tall pines, past bracken stretching in the morning
mist, down to the statue where we gather
for one last photograph before we go
our separate ways, one final game together,
and then the holiday is done. We know
one day we will look back on precious hours
when we lay on the grass beneath the stars.
XV – Occlusion
We lie out on the grass beneath the stars –
The plough is buried handle deep in cloud
and all that ought to feel familiar
is, as we watch, concealed within its shroud.
The wildfire smoke is rising in the distance,
The gravity of grief hangs in the air.
To lift our eyes beyond is our resistance,
Reminding us of all that we still share.
Yet what is lost, in memory obscured,
beyond all that our fleeting eyes can see
is, even now, the rock that keeps us moored,
The hope that binds us to reality.
And so we gaze on galaxies afar,
Our hearts still gladdened by the shooting stars.
(c) Rich Clarkson 2026
Photo by Abhishek Koli on Unsplash
