Mortal Time

I posted an earlier draft of this, but the version I finally submitted at Westercon was extensively revised with the help of the good folks at Sonnet Central.

The rules of the Iron Poet Bouts-Rimes contest were: you had to write a sonnet using the end-words of an existing sonnet. The sonnet in question was Charles Lamb's "As when a child..." and the words were: night, knees, delight, decrees, spell, time, sublime, hell, tear, tell, dear, fell, impart, heart. For extra points, use the word "gnome". This is what I wrote:

The gnomon's shadow scythes its way toward night.
A boy-child sits beside a woman’s knees
and holds her hand. She raised him with delight
and love-- against the King of Hell's decrees.
She knew it wouldn’t last, the changeling spell
that made the child seem human for a time.
It’s ending now. She’s watched the years sublime
like ice in vacuum.
He'll be crowned in Hell
tonight, a Prince anointed with the tears
shed by a mother.
Still she cannot tell
her son the gnomic words that she holds dear:
that love may yet redeem the ones who fell.
She’s used her mortal time up to impart
a seed of human love to demon heart.