(I just crack myself up, really I do).
This is the long-awaited sestina that has been driving me nuts since May. I wrote the first two verses, made up all the tables of end-word shifts, realised I’d screwed up the second verse, tried to re-write it, lost heart and buried the note-book under the bed. Not that it’d leave me alone. I found myself muttering ‘grass green grey stone white sky, sky grass white, err, oh damn,’ in the small hours of the morning. Time to fish it all out and try again.
Obviously three months’ maturation is rather good for finicky verse-forms. Absolutely whanged the old nail over the crumpet in one afternoon. I am so breaking out the G&T when I’m done here.
Six Graveyards
Above the dust-pale road the walls stand white
And blazing in the heat. The sun-bleached sky,
Drum-tight with hidden thunder, bakes the grey
Deserted paths between the polished stones.
Outside the gate a shrine stands in the green
Damp shade between Mimosa trees and grass.In here the plots are overgrown with grass.
Each headstone wears a photograph bleached white,
The face and name beneath it gone. This green
Space no bigger than a room, roofed with sky
And walled with shells of mortar, falls of stone -
The sons of those who left it are now grey.For six months of the year the sky is grey,
And yet the tourists pick through long wet grass
To find that one or other famous stone
Amid the multitude that glow near-white
Under the luminescent winter sky
Or in the shadows of a summer green.Beside the railway-tracks the trees stand green
Above the bitter sorrows carved in grey,
The granite teddy-bears. The warm sweet sky
Rests softly on the bright toys in the grass,
And years of weekly visits, flowers, and white-
Bleached scraps of birthday cards stuck to the stone.Since this was once a graveyard, slabs of stone
Still lie behind the benches on the green,
And lines where letters once cut into white
And hard-edged marble, now a softer grey,
Are moss-filled scribbles buried in the grass;
No readers stand between them and the sky.And under an immensity of sky
With many stands another fresh-cut stone.
Here someone comes to trim away the grass
And the last rose-bush planted is still green
And blazing in the jumbled rows of grey.
They’re bridal flowers, luxuriantly white.Alas the bright and ruthless sky, the green
That wears away the stone and hides the grey
And white beneath the dazzle of the grass.
See how it works? You choose six ‘hero’ words to end the lines (iambic pentameter for me, but it isn’t de rigeur), a through f . And then you shuffle them in each progressive stanza, f to line 1, a to line 2, e to 3, b to 4, d to 5, c to 6. And then you have a new order of a to f to shuffle for the stanza after that. And then you try and get all six in a three line envoi in a new order: the last stanza’s 1st and 4th, 2nd and 5th, 4th and 6th. And if you are really running with the big boys, you end up with a poem that all makes sense, and an envoi that recaps and/or comments on the whole.
It may be rubbish, but it’s clever rubbish, and I have rarely felt so smug.
Wow, that certainly is clever! I am particularly taken with the stanza on the ex-graveyeard, which is somehow a sadder place than any of the others.
Left by Singing Librarian on August 27th, 2006
That is amazing, Reed. Truly lovely. You are inspiring me to want to write poetry again, something I had almost decided wasn’t possible.
To me, something like this that possesses a structure is more satisfying than the free verse that is so popular these days. I used to write sonnets for the exercise of the form as much s for the content. And I used to experiment with different rhyme schemes.
There was a society I nearly joined ages ago that was for poets. Each month or two, can’t remember the time frame, they would choose a poetic form and then everyone had the same length of time to write one and share with the group. That sounded like fabulous fun. But life got in the way and I knew there wasn’t going to be any time or energy anywhere for me to actually do it. That is one of my regrets in life - that I didn’t join that group. I wish I had taken my poetry seriously when I still had enough of a brain to possibly make a go at it.
Now my brain is mush and my creativity is inside a carpetbag being hauled hither and yon by my blasted muse who got tired of waiting for me to write something fit to print and took off in search of a more promising candidate. I do get postcards from her occassionally. The last one was from a canteena in Cuernavaca. She wanted me to send her money for new hurachis.
Left by Hyp on August 27th, 2006
Sestinas always seem to me to be quite extraordinarily difficult to write, so to have come up with something so good, despite being held in by such rigid confines, is a real achievement. Well done.
Left by Katja on August 27th, 2006
*Curtseys* (because I can).
Hello Katja, always immensely gratifying to see a new face.
Hyp, fantastic comment. Made me laugh and sigh and laugh again. And I agree - I am not a great fan of vers libre. It takes immense skill and an insanely well-tuned ear for rhythm and language, and that is frankly what a lot of practitioners of it Have Not Got. They think it’s easier than sonnets. Yes, well, jigging about in a disco is easier than ballet, but which are you going to pay good money to watch?
(I am feeling a little grumpetty and waspish about poetry today because I have recently been showered with the offerings of an acquaintance, all vers libre, and all, err, lumpily cut up prose with the pronouns missing. One must be tactful acquaintance, they have a terrible tendency to resent being ignored or insufficently praised).
Anyway, my muse swanned off when I was in my early twenties. I started to hate all my poetry - it all seemed so adolescent and hysteric - and lose sight of the point of continuing (ie, to improve). The Muse, shallow cow that she invariably is, not that mine had gone to Cuernavaca, in fact, I think she was in Whitby - what on earth is a hurachi, by the way? - came galloping right back again as soon as I had done a few technical exercises. She waited until I’d looked at said technical exercises, felt despair, had a drink, and (and this is crucial) began another technical exercise anyway.
Left by Reed on August 27th, 2006
Huarachi is a type of a shoe made in mexico (usually) of woven leather strips.
My muse hasn’t left yet, although I have bought her a ticket to Cuernavaca this morning hoping she will join Hypatia’s there. She has been hanging around here with a brick bat and keeps hitting me behind the ear with it.
I am one of those despised creators of free verse, I even despise myself because I have not had the discipline to learn any poetic forms. I was too busy memorizing piano sonatas, I guess. Anyway, I am overwhelmed by my complete worthless ness when I read things like your triolet and sestina. After the triolet, which I really liked, I have spent quite some time trying to even come up with a pair of lines that would make something that would make sense, to no avail.
Maybe my muse is in Cuernavaca after all, and it is just a mugger hitting me.
Left by healingmagichands on August 28th, 2006