Volume 16:1, Winter 2015
The Sonnet Issue
Hunted
The hunted hare seeks out some dark retreat
And hopes the pulsing pack will pass him by
His body quivers, fast his heart must beat
As oft he hears the heartless huntsmen’s cry:
So hunted still by love’s relentless might
With heart convulsing and with hasty tread
I seek some refuge, hidden from his sight
So he might pass whom I so darkly dread;
Pass on, and leave me there to die of grief
Or solaced back to life in Nature’s arms
On her soft soothing breast to find relief
And half forget the sorrow of love’s charms:
But lo! he comes with his own cruel dart
To find me out and wound for sport my heart.
Una Marson (February 6, 1905 - May 5, 1965) was a Jamaican writer, feminist, and activist, and the author of four books of poems, Tropic Reveries (1930), Heights and Depths (1932), Moth and the Star (1937), and Towards the Stars (1945). All four books are notable for their large number of love sonnets. She also wrote three plays, At What Price (1933), London Calling (1938), and Pocomania (1938). Marson spent her adult life split primarily between Jamaica (where she worked as an editor and helped promote West Indian literature), and London (where she was the first African American woman broadcaster hired by the BBC), but she did live in DC briefly during the 1950s.