Listening to too much Dylan on my walks obviously...

...for, aside from learning today that the distance from my house to the WW I Memorial at the top of Walnut Hill Park in New Britain is the distance from "Rainy Day Woman" to "Brand New Leopard Skin Pill-box Hat," the walk inspired me to "create" the following cento --- the original sampling!**

A Petrarchan Blonde on Blonde Cento Sonnet

She’s delicate and seems like the mirror                                
of your balcony wond’ring where you are,
with pockets well protected and streetcars,
sayin “I’ll go out and say a prayer for                                               
the cracked bells and washed-out horns                                
at your feet while phony false alarms
furnish me with tape deep inside my heart.
I just can’t do what I done before…”                                               
But you said, “Don’t forget everybody                     
must give these promises you left for me      
with your silhouette, when the sunlight high-           
way blues is so stuffy I can hardly
whisper, ‘Not even you can hide, you see,                
but this time I’m not gonna tell you why.’”

**A cento is an ancient poetic genre made up of lines and parts of lines from other texts.  In this case, all come from the lyrics of Dylan's 1966 album Blonde on Blonde. My favorite cento is Ausonius' Vergilian one about a marriage night: Taking a sword out of its sheath takes on a whole new meaning!

Ausonius

Dylan