sestinas

I saw my soul at rest upon a day
As a bird sleeping in the nest of night,
Among soft leaves that give the starlight way
To touch its wings but not its eyes with light;
So that it knew as one in visions may,
And knew not as men waking, of delight.

This was the measure of my soul’s delight;
It had no power of joy to fly by day,
Nor part in the large lordship of the light;
But in a secret moon-beholden way
Had all its will of dreams and pleasant night,
And all the love and life that sleepers may.

But such life’s triumph as men waking may
It might not have to feed its faint delight
Between the stars by night and sun by day,
Shut up with green leaves and a little light;
Because its way was as a lost star’s way,
A world’s not wholly known of day or night.

All loves and dreams and sounds and gleams of night
Made it all music that such minstrels may,
And all they had they gave it of delight;
But in the full face of the fire of day
What place shall be for any starry light,
What part of heaven in all the wide sun’s way?

Yet the soul woke not, sleeping by the way,
Watched as a nursling of the large-eyed night,
And sought no strength nor knowledge of the day,
Nor closer touch conclusive of delight,
Nor mightier joy nor truer than dreamers may,
Nor more of song than they, nor more of light.

For who sleeps once and sees the secret light
Whereby sleep shows the soul a fairer way
Between the rise and rest of day and night,
Shall care no more to fare as all men may,
But be his place of pain or of delight,
There shall he dwell, beholding night as day.

Song, have thy day and take thy fill of light
Before the night be fallen across thy way;
Sing while he may, man hath no long delight.

This is a double sestina. As if the regular ol’ sestina wasn’t, you know, hard enough.

There is no woman living who draws breath
So sad as I, though all things sadden her.
There is not one upon life’s weariest way
Who is weary as I am weary of all but death.
Toward whom I look as looks the sunflower
All day with all his whole soul toward the sun;
While in the sun’s sight I make moan all day,
And all night on my sleepless maiden bed.
Weep and call out on death, O Love, and thee,
That thou or he would take me to the dead.
And know not what thing evil I have done
That life should lay such heavy hand on me.

Alas! Love, what is this thou wouldst with me?
What honor shalt thou have to quench my breath,
Or what shall my heart broken profit thee?
O Love, O great god Love, what have I done,
That thou shouldst hunger so after my death?
My heart is harmless as my life’s first day:
Seek out some false fair woman, and plague her
Till her tears even as my tears fill her bed:
I am the least flower in thy flowery way,
But till my time be come that I be dead,
Let me live out my flower-time in the sun,
Though my leaves shut before the sunflower.

O Love, Love, Love, the kingly sunflower!
Shall he the sun hath looked on look on me,
That live down here in shade, out of the sun,
Here living in the sorrow and shadow of death?
Shall he that feeds his heart full of the day
Care to give mine eyes light, or my lips breath?
Because she loves him, shall my lord love her
Who is as a worm in my lord’s kingly way?
I shall not see him or know him alive or dead;
But thou, I know thee, O Love, and pray to thee
That in brief while my brief life-days be done,
And the worm quickly make my marriage-bed.

For underground there is no sleepless bed.
But here since I beheld my sunflower
These eyes have slept not, seeing all night and day
His sunlike eyes, and face fronting the sun.
Wherefore, if anywhere be any death,
I fain would find and fold him fast to me,
That I may sleep with the world’s eldest dead,
With her that died seven centuries since, and her
That went last night down the night-wandering way.
For this is sleep indeed, when labor is done,
Without love, without dreams, and without breath,
And without thought, O name unnamed! of thee.

Ah! but, forgetting all things, shall I thee?
Wilt thou not be as now about my bed
There underground as here before the sun?
Shall not thy vision vex me alive and dead,
Thy moving vision without form or breath?
I read long since the bitter tale of her
Who read the tale of Launcelot on a day,
And died, and had no quiet after death,
But was moved ever along a weary way,
Lost with her love in the underworld; ah me,
O my king, O my lordly sunflower,
Would God to me, too, such a thing were done!

But if such sweet and bitter things be done,
Then, flying from life, I shall not fly from thee.
For in that living world without a sun
Thy vision will lay hold upon me dead,
And meet and mock me, and mar my peace in death.
Yet if being wroth, God had such pity on her,
Who was a sinner and foolish in her day,
That even in hell they twain should breathe one breath,
Why should he not in some wise pity me?
So if I sleep not in my soft strait bed,
I may look up and see my sunflower
As he the sun, in some divine strange way.

O poor my heart, well knowest thou in what way
This sore sweet evil unto us was done.
For on a holy and a heavy day
I was arisen out of my still small bed
To see the knights tilt, and one said to me
“The king;” and seeing him, somewhat stopped my breath;
And if the girl spake more, I heard her not,
For only I saw what I shall see when dead,
A kingly flower of knights, a sunflower,
That shone against the sunlight like the sun,
And like a fire, O heart, consuming thee,
The fire of love that lights the pyre of death.

Howbeit I shall not die an evil death
Who have loved in such a sad and sinless way,
That this my love, lord, was no shame to thee.
So when mine eyes are shut against the sun,
O my soul’s sun, O the world’s sunflower,
Thou nor no man will quite despise me dead.
And dying I pray with all my low last breath
That thy whole life may be as was that day,
That feast-day that made trothplight death and me,
Giving the world light of thy great deeds done;
And that fair face brightening thy bridal bed,
That God be good as God hath been to her.

That all things goodly and glad remain with her,
All things that make glad life and goodly death;
That as a bee sucks from a sunflower
Honey, when summer draws delighted breath,
Her soul may drink of thy soul in like way,
And love make life a fruitful marriage-bed
Where day may bring forth fruits of joy to day
And night to night till days and nights be dead.
And as she gives light of her love to thee,
Give thou to her the old glory of days long done;
And either give some heat of light to me,
To warm me where I sleep without the sun.

O sunflower make drunken with the sun,
O knight whose lady’s heart draws thine to her,
Great king, glad lover, I have a word to thee.
There is a weed lives out of the sun’s way,
Hid from the heat deep in the meadow’s bed,
That swoons and whitens at the wind’s least breath,
A flower star-shaped, that all a summer day
Will gaze her soul out on the sunflower
For very love till twilight finds her dead.
But the great sunflower heeds not her poor death,
Knows not when all her loving life is done;
And so much knows my lord the king of me.

Ay, all day long he has no eye for me;
With golden eye following the golden sun
From rose-colored to purple-pillowed bed,
From birthplace to the flame-lit place of death,
From eastern end to western of his way,
So mine eye follows thee, my sunflower,
So the white star-flower turns and yearns to thee,
The sick weak weed, not well alive or dead,
Trod under foot if any pass by her,
Pale, without color of summer or summer breath
In the shrunk shuddering petals, that have done
No work but love, and die before the day.

But thou, to-day, to-morrow, and every day,
Be glad and great, O love whose love slays me.
Thy fervent flower made fruitful from the sun
Shall drop its golden seed in the world’s way,
That all men thereof nourished shall praise thee
For grain and flower and fruit of works well done;
Till thy shed seed, O shining sunflower,
Bring forth such growth of the world’s garden-bed
As like the sun shall outlive age and death.
And yet I would thine heart had heed of her
Who loves thee alive; but not till she be dead.
Come, Love, then, quickly, and take her utmost breath.

Song, speak for me who am dumb as are the dead;
From my sad bed of tears I send forth thee,
To fly all day from sun’s birth to sun’s death
Down the sun’s way after the flying sun,
For love of her that gave thee wings and breath
Ere day be done, to seek the sunflower.

The winds of spring are starting
Even in June to blow
From a wild sky, and round this house
Where a cat sleeps on a bed
And my friends bring me in some kai,
Goat chops roasted a bit too much

In our family oven. But that’s not much
To gripe about. When we were starting
Here we often had no kai
Except onions, and the rain would blow
Through broken windows. Now I lie on a bed
In what the cops would call my house

Though it is in fact a Maori house
Under the wing of the marae too much
For many to like it. The church would give us a bed
Of nails to lie on, the State would like to see me starting
An army borstal. Let the wind blow
From the Maori hill and we will get our kai,

Our houses, our freedom. Tank our friend brings kai
Up from the pa. Father Te Awhitu patched this house
Chopping timber blow by blow
When the pakeha farmers would not have given as much
As a cup of tea. Now the tree is starting
To sprout from its ramshackle seedbed,

The love of the many. I can lie in bed
Under blankets and eat for a kai
The goats my friends have shot, while slips are starting
To block the river road. This old Maori house
Is the mother’s lap where the child learns as much
As he is able, and the June rains blow

Harmlessly. I wait for God’s breath to blow
Life into the body of a culture on its deathbed
Or else, Frank, for those who have had to bear too much
To make a new start, share their clothes and kai,
Put down mattresses in every meeting house
And build their own canoe. It’s difficult starting

Anything new, yet the wind starting to blow
From the house of the sun will tumble the saints out of bed.
It’s wise to eat one’s kai and not say too much.

You said that you would never want to be
remembered as anything but lucky.
But now, a year after your death, and here,
in this stark, symmetrical place more
rigid than the most restrictive poem,
I wonder whom to blame your luck on—God?

You said that you could always turn to God,
that given any situation He would be
more solace than the most respected poem.
And did I think that I was merely lucky
in my talent and accomplishment? More
likely God had put me, for some reason, here.

Still, my father, I ask why you are here.
And through those long, untimely years did God
watch your slow paralysis grow, more
deaf than He had any right to be?
I’d rather think that you were just unlucky
and not some pawn in God’s unending poem.

I’d like to think that somehow my small poem
could bring a measure of solace, even here.
Whitman said he felt that death was lucky,
that he could far outstrip most any god,
that through his manly verses we could be
immortal—a self, a song, a kosmos, something more.

Soon enough, we’ll all be nothing more
than figures in some unforgotten poem
(if we’re lucky). God, don’t let us be
cut off, incomplete, like a sestina, ending here.

October. They decide it is time to move.
The family has grown too large, the house
too small. The father smokes his pipe.
He says, I know that you all love
this house. He turns to his child
who is crying. She doesn’t want to leave.

Outside in the large bright yard the leaves
are turning. They know it is time to move
down onto the ground where the child
will rake them together and make a house
for her dolls to play in. They love
the child. A small bird starts to pipe

his song to the leaves while the pipe
in the father’s hand sputters. The father leaves
no doubt that he’s made up his mind. He loves
his family; that’s why they must move.
The child says, this is a wonderful house.
But nobody listens. She’s only a child.

The father continues to talk. The child
cries, staring out at the Indian pipes
in her backyard, wondering if the birds of this house
will pack up their children, their nests, and leave
the old yard. Do birds ever move?
Do they know her sadness, her love?

Her father is smoking and talking of love.
Does he know what it’s like being a child?
He knows she doesn’t want to move.
She hates him sitting there smoking his pipe.
When has he ever been forced to leave
something he loved? He can’t love this house.

The father sits by himself in the house
thinking how painful it is to love
a daughter, a house. He’s watched her leave
saying she hates him. She’s just a child
but it hurts nonetheless. Smoking his pipe
he wonders if he is wrong about the move.

Outside the bird pipes: Don’t move. Don’t move.
The bright leaves fall on the wonderful house.
And the child sits crying, learning about love.