The Golden Sestina – Ezra Pound

May 10th, 2007 by jelyon

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 the sun,
One fashioned by th’ high hand of utmost Jove,
So fair beneath the myrtles on gay grass
Who holdeth Love and Truth, one by each hand,
It seems, if I look straight, two bands of gold
Do make more fair her delicate fair face.

Though eyes are dazzled, looking on her face
As all sight faileth that looks toward the sun,
New metamorphoses, to rained gold,
Or bulls or whitest swans, might fall on Jove
Through her, or Phoebus, his bag-pipes in hand,
Might, mid the droves, come barefoot o’er our grass.

Alas, that there was hidden in the grass
A cruel shaft, the which, to wound my face,
My Lady took in her own proper hand.
If I could not defend me ‘gainst that sun
I take no shame, for even utmost Jove
Is in high heaven pierced with darts of gold.

Behold the green shall find itself turned gold
And spring shall be without her flowers and grass,
And hell’s deep be the dwelling place of Jove
Ere I shall have uncarved her holy face
From my heart’s midst, where ’tis both Sun and sun;
And yet she beareth me such hostile hand!

O sweet and holy and O most light hand,
O intermingled ivory and gold,
O mortal goddess and terrestrial sun
Who comest not to foster meadow grass,
But to show heaven by a likened face
Wert sent amongst us by th’ exalted Jove,

I still pray Jove that he permit no grass
To cover o’er thy hands, thy face, thy gold
For heaven’s sufficèd with a single sun.

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Sestina at 3 AM – Linda Pastan

May 10th, 2007 by jelyon

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 the wind.
Braided with stars
the sky’s long
awning shelters the world. And now the dark—
that first mother of sleep—
coaxes: “Go under,

let yourself go under,
let the wind
whisper you to sleep
and the stars
will go out, the dark
surf will rock you in its hammock all night long.”

The night is very long.
Far under
the surface of water, dark
fish swim deaf to the wind,
only coral reefs for stars,
no need of sleep.

I want so much to sleep.
It is what I long
for, more than love. I want these tallowed stars
snuffed out under
clouds or fog. Why can’t the wind
just blow them out and leave me to the dark?

sleep and sleep … I am going under
long and under and wind
and under … your face … the stars … the dark

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Sestina For Ysolt – Ezra Pound

May 10th, 2007 by jelyon

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 hands that lie as flowers
Which though they labour not are worthy praise,
And praise deep eyes like pools wherein the stars
Gleam out reflected in their loveliness,
For whoso look on such there is no greyness
May hang about his heart on any day.

The other things that I would praise to-day?
Besides white hands and all the fragile flowers,
And by their praise dispel the evening’s greyness?
I praise dim hair that worthiest is of praise
And dream upon its unbound loveliness,
And how therethrough mine eyes have seen the stars.

Yea, through that cloud mine eyes have seen the stars
That drift out slowly when night steals the day,
Through such a cloud meseems their loveliness
Surpasses that of all the other flowers.
For that one night I give all nights my praise
And love therefrom the twilight’s coming greyness.

There is a stillness in this twilight greyness
Although the rain hath veiled the flow’ry stars,
They seem to listen as I weave this praise
Of what I have not seen all this grey day,
And they will tell my praise unto the flowers
When May shall bid them in in loveliness.

O ye I love, who hold this loveliness
Near to your hearts, may never any greyness
Enshroud your hearts when ye would gather flowers,
Or bind your eyes when ye would see the stars;
But alway do I give ye flowers by day,
And when day’s plucked I give ye stars for praise.

But most, thou Flower, whose eyes are like the stars,
With whom my dreams bide all the live-long day,
Within thy hands would I rest all my praise.

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Sestina – Michael McClure

May 10th, 2007 by jelyon

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 lie on among blossoms.

Those things that are the world are white blossoms.
They fall on the dark floor in the patterns of headache
creating a carpet in our being like moss.
From a distance the face becomes a mask of turquoise,
or jade, and it begins to reject the experience
of anything, even gentleness, that touches the skull.

I would speak with my body but my skull
is there like a crab shell decked with blossoms
and I wish to resist all but the drabbest experience
for I am lost and pounding the walls of my headache.
It is a pleasure to run fingers over turquoise.
The veins and striations may be felt as moss.

The elegance of stones is like green moss
growing on a jawbone dropped from a sheep skull
on a cliffbank in Iceland where Indian turquoise
is more exotic than these strange blossoms
that make up a constellation I call my headache.
The substrate suffers an overdose of experience.

I take notes on the body of experience
which grows as obsidian boulders and moss
and becomes, at last, the statement of headache
that vibrates minute beacons in my skull.
Each being grows unique among blossoms
of emanated gods and katydids in a field of turquoise.

My house is electric blue not turquoise
but I will imagine the bulks of all experience,
for, imagined or real, they are brother blossoms.
I will not regret either needles or moss.
Regardless of the noise in my skull
I will fall divinely in love with my headache.

The night might be turquoise or a pale moss
but it is all experience to be stored in the skull.
This body is made of blossoms—even my headache.

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Sestina: Travel Notes – Weldon Kees

May 10th, 2007 by jelyon

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, corruptible, they burden
All who would vanish on some questioned voyage,
Tunneling through the longest way away
To maps of bitterness and silence.

We are concerned with that destructive silence
Impending in the dark, that never harms
Us till it strikes, washing the past away.
Remote from intrigues of the others,
We must chart routes that ease the voyage,
Clear passageways and lift the burden.

But where are routes? Who names the burden?
The night is gifted with a devious silence
That names no promises of voyage
Without contagion and the syllables of harm.
—I see ahead the hands of others
In frantic motion, warning me away.

To pay no heed, and walk away
Is easy; but the familiar burden
Of a later time, when certainties of others

Assume the frigid shapes of silence
And build new winters, echoing harm,
May banish every passageway for voyage.

You knew before the fear of voyage,
You saw before the hands that warned away,
You heard before the voices trained to harm
Listeners grown weak through loss and burdens.
Even in city streets at noon that silence
Waited for you, but not, you thought, for others.

Storms will break silence. Seize on harm,
Play idiot or seer to others, make the burden
Theirs, though no voyage is, no tunnel, door, nor way.

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Sestina – Michael McClure

May 10th, 2007 by jelyon

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 blue shades
and scents over babes
who fear no black
candles
in the hugeness of consciousness.

We are the autumn of consciousness
giving birth to spring roses
by the silverware next to the candles.
Not all of the shades
nor all of the purple and black
convinces us we are other than babes.

You know we are babes.
Each thing is our consciousness.
The cave is black
but it is filled with roses
—and though we draw the shades
we light the candles.

The bright glow is from the candles
in the hands of babes
who outline the shades
of perception in consciousness.
See there are roses!
They stand in the black.

Those are candles of consciousness
that show we are babes and floating roses.
We are shades of flesh turning on black.

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Sestina On The British Coarse – Greg Keeler

May 10th, 2007 by jelyon

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 down
galleries of watercolor. And, of course,
the stone is still “dark under froth” in that place
at “the down-turn of his wrist/When the flies
drop in the stream.” The dream is real. The man
does exist. But you’d think that he’d detest

the barbel, tench, chub and carp—detest
the coarse. He doesn’t. As I walked down
to Trafalgar Square, a picture of a man
on a magazine drew me to the rack. The coarse
tweed of his jacket was dotted with real flies
and covered with slime. He’d won first place

with the twenty-pound carp, out of place
in his arms, held as a chubby child for the contest
judges, held as if it might fly,
so fat and zeppelin-like it was. Then it dawned
on me, British or not, his face—his coarse
smile was almost American! That man’s

smile rode his carp like the first Englishmen
rode the Mayflower. I paid the clerk, found a place
to sit by a Wimpy’s, and opened my Coarse
Fishing Mail. Within were lists of contest
winners beside the hoops of live-holding nets, down
by other ads for dough-bait, chum catapults and fly-

sized hooks. I paused and watched the pigeons fly
up and light on Admiral Nelson then read about a man
with a fat carp under each arm, caught fresh just down
the Thames; a boy with eight bulging tench, placed
on the bank grass of Regents Park Lake, testing
the light like a necklace of huge opals. On the coarse

have mercy, Yeats. These people and fat fish don’t fly
in the face of great Art and the wise. These fishermen
know carp too can be “as cold/And passionate as the dawn.”

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Sestina Of Sunday Music – Vernon Scannell

May 10th, 2007 by jelyon

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 melting pearls that form a pool which leaves
rich sonic fragrance in the air. Then, drawn
from woodwinds’ lamentations and forlorn
complaints of strings, float wraiths of bugle-calls.

This is the Sunday music that recalls
dim images of loss and one who grieves
and gazes over moorland more forlorn
than twilit fields of crosses. Here rain falls
unceasingly. Gun-carriages, horse-drawn,
move with small thunder muffled by moist leaves.

It is not only genius that leaves
its legacy of melody which calls
our hearts to mastering heel where they are drawn
to passionate compliance: Rudolfo grieves
as poignantly as Dido. Waterfalls
of richness drench, but leave us still forlorn.

Whoever writes the score, the same forlorn
message is received. The years, like leaves,
are heaped beneath the trees; the last one falls,
and then the man in sable clothing calls.
Love can’t be weighed by how the window grieves.
Like all the hard-fought contests this is drawn.

Violins are beautiful as objects drawn
by master draughtsmen; even the forlorn
stone-or-tone-deaf solitary who grieves
apart perceives the sweep of sound that leaves
shapes of unuttered song, and so he calls
“Encore!” before the final curtain falls.

Then he, too, falls. The orchestra’s withdrawn
and no more curtain-calls; the drained, forlorn
audience leaves, and darkening silence grieves.

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From The Italian Of Dante – Clive Wilmer

May 10th, 2007 by jelyon

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 this miracle of woman
Stays frozen like the deep snow left in shadow:
For she is no more moved than is a stone
By the sweet season—that which warms the hills
Turning the whiteness of them into green
And decking them in wild flowers, herbs and grass.

When her hair is garlanded with woven grass,
She draws the mind away from other women:
She braids the rippling yellow with the green
So beautifully, Love lingers in their shadow—
Love, who confines me here between low hills
More stringently than mortar binding stone.

Her beauty holds more power than precious stones
And nothing remedies—not herb or grass—
The hurt she gives: so over plain and hill
I have fled, my one need to escape that woman,
But from her eyes’ clear light have found no shadow
By mountain, wall or leafage dense with green.

There was a time I saw her dressed in green
In such a way she could have made a stone
Feel the great love I bear her very shadow;
I desired her, therefore, in a field of grass—
As much in love as ever any woman
Has been—and ringed about by lofty hills.

But rivers will flow back and climb their hills
Before this wood, which is both damp and green,
Will at my touch catch fire—as fair women
Are known to do; and I would sleep on stone
My whole life long and go feeding on grass
Only to see where her dress casts a shadow.

Whenever the hills cast their blackest shadow,
With lovely green she makes it, this young woman,
Vanish, as stones are hidden in the grass.

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Yadwigha, on a Red Couch, Among Lilies A Sestina for the Douanier – Sylvia Plath

May 10th, 2007 by jelyon

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 wanted you
To choose between your world of jungle green
And the fashionable monde of the red couch
With its prim bric-à-brac, without a moon
To turn you luminous, without the eye

Of tigers to be stilled by your dark eye
And body whiter than its frill of lilies:
They’d have had yellow silk screening the moon,
Leaves and lilies flattened to paper behind you
Or, at most, to a mille-fleurs tapestry. But the couch
Stood stubborn in its jungle: red against green,

Red against fifty variants of green,
The couch glared out at the prosaic eye.

So Rousseau, to explain why the red couch
Persisted in the picture with the lilies,
Tigers, snakes, and the snakecharmer and you,
And birds of paradise, and the round moon,

Described how you fell dreaming at full of moon
On a red velvet couch within your green-
Tessellated boudoir. Hearing flutes, you
Dreamed yourself away in the moon’s eye
To a beryl jungle, and dreamed that bright moon-lilies
Nodded their petaled heads around your couch.

And that, Rousseau told the critics, was why the couch
Accompanied you. So they nodded at the couch with the moon
And the snakecharmer’s song and the gigantic lilies,
Marvelingly numbered the many shades of green.
But to a friend, in private, Rousseau confessed his eye
So possessed by the glowing red of the couch which you,

Yadwigha, pose on, that he put you on the couch
To feed his eye with red: such red! under the moon,
In the midst of all that green and those great lilies!

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