May
10
The Golden Sestina – Ezra Pound
May 10, 2007 | Leave a Comment
In the bright season when He, most high Jove, From welkin reaching down his glorying hand, Decks the Great Mother and her changing face, Clothing her not with scarlet skeins and gold But with th’ empurpling flowers and gay grass, When the young year renewed, renews the sun, When, then, I see a lady like [...]
May
10
Sestina at 3 AM – Linda Pastan
May 10, 2007 | Leave a Comment
In the imperfect dark no hope of either love or sleep, I listen to the wind and water’s long bewildering dialogue, under the common stars. Tonight the stars abrade the dark. If I could under- stand why you left, then I could sleep. How long until you call? No message in the wind, not in [...]
May
10
Sestina For Ysolt – Ezra Pound
May 10, 2007 | Leave a Comment
There comes upon me will to speak in praise Of things most fragile in their loveliness; Because the sky hath wept all this long day And wrapped men’s hearts within its cloak of greyness, Because they look not down I sing the stars, Because ’tis still mid-March I praise May’s flowers. Also I praise long [...]
May
10
Sestina – Michael McClure
May 10, 2007 | Leave a Comment
THE BEAUTIFUL LINES OF FLAMES IDENTIFY MY [HEADACHE. The fires are blue and gold and orange and turquoise. They ring like one beat of a drum within my skull. My being is overwhelmed by experience. Wings grow out of my skull to fly me away to soft moss where there is a cliff I would [...]
May
10
Sestina: Travel Notes – Weldon Kees
May 10, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Directed by the eyes of others, Blind to the long, deceptive voyage, We walked across the bridge in silence And said “Goodnight,” and paused, and walked away. Ritual of apology and burden: The evening ended; not a soul was harmed. But then I thought: we all are harmed By the indifference of others; Being corrupt, [...]
May
10
Sestina – Michael McClure
May 10, 2007 | Leave a Comment
WE ARE WHITE FLAMES IN BLACK and we are silver candles, smiles on roses, newborn babes, otter consciousness, and night shades. We are ghostly shades and the shapes of black bonfires that melt through consciousness. Perceptions are candles and we are babes who imagine the thorns of roses. The petals of roses make pink and [...]
May
10
Sestina On The British Coarse – Greg Keeler
May 10, 2007 | Leave a Comment
What we call sucker, chub and carp are coarse to them. I have dreamed of lords with fly rods and tweeds beside the chalk-bottomed Test. Granted, that’s no myth. Yeats’ Irishman, the freckled one “who goes to a grey place on a hill/In grey Connemara clothes/At dawn to cast his flies” still works his way [...]
May
10
Sestina Of Sunday Music – Vernon Scannell
May 10, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Another Sunday evening; darkness falls earlier now each day and I have drawn the curtains long ago. Faint, distant calls of nameless creatures pencil their forlorn needs on silence’s soft slate. Dry leaves outside converse in whispers. A thin wind grieves. Inside, a different kind of music grieves: a measured threnody unfolds and falls in [...]
May
10
From The Italian Of Dante – Clive Wilmer
May 10, 2007 | Leave a Comment
I have come now to the long arc of shadow And the short day, alas, and where the hills Whiten, the colour gone from the old grass; Yet my desire is constant in its green, It has so taken root in the hard stone That speaks and hears as if it were a woman. Similarly [...]
May
10
Yadwigha, on a Red Couch, Among Lilies A Sestina for the Douanier – Sylvia Plath
May 10, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Yadwigha, the literalists once wondered how you Came to be lying on this baroque couch Upholstered in red velvet, under the eye Of uncaged tigers and a tropical moon, Set in an intricate wilderness of green Heart-shaped leaves, like catalpa leaves, and lilies Of monstrous size, like no well-bred lilies. It seems the consistent critics [...]