Rhyme is a same-sonic marriage
and Time is a dominant beat
who disciplines súbmissive syllables
in bondage to her feet.
Time is like the violet bud,
Rhyme is like the lilac tree
once cultivated, now grown wild,
still fair to see.
Below them lie the leaves of grass,
predictable and everywhere.
Look up and breathe the cadences
titillating in the air——
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Samantha Pious is a poet, translator, editor, and medievalist with a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Pennsylvania. Her translations of Renée Vivien are available as A Crown of Violets (Headmistress Press, 2017); her translation of Christine de Pizan's One Hundred Ballades of a Lover and His Lady is forthcoming. Individual poems have appeared in Bi Women Quarterly, The Gay & Lesbian Review, e.ratio, Mezzo Cammin, Strange Horizons, and other journals.
