Sestina

Continuing my experimentation with poetic forms, thanks to Stephen Fry's book (see previous post), here is a 'sestina'.

So easy to threaten my wife’s identity

Just two-way slanging, no real interaction

Self-pity and anger like hot gas expansion

Awareness is nowhere, no calm concentration

Could balance bring harmony, relative order?

In childishness hiding, in dream without freedom

Robotic reaction, no space left for freedom

Self-knowledge alone can yield our true identity

With mind brought to bear, impartially order

Between us, inside us grows clear interaction

Warm feelings emerge which attend concentration

By Jove are we ruled under free love’s expansion

Contraction of ego and caring’s expansion

Habitual grievances give way to freedom

Attention brings energy, joy’s concentration

Sweet sufferings forge will and a stronger identity

No fear, no hate in this quiet interaction

Emotional chaos resolves towards order

  

As equals we speak without needing to order

Can trust be the basis of lustful expansion

As bodies come closer in flesh interaction?

Let go trepidation, grab ecstasy’s freedom

With egoless peace comes our gentler identity

Good will in the heart undergoes concentration

The soul of sensation born of concentration

Acceptance of weakness a hopeful new order

To merge with great Being, a higher identity

Duality’s seen and there’s third-force expansion

Submission to Higher’s not bondage but freedom

Below as above is divine interaction

Exchanges of substances feed interaction

Distilling our essence in pure concentration

External and inside a chance of real freedom

Related and upright in natural order

Encompassing consciousness spreads in expansion

New Self or old Self become wholly identity

Interaction of lesser, perfection of order

Concentration of energy, understanding’s expansion

Increasing our freedom, rebirth of identity

To trudge the road, the odious ode! (adventures in poesy with thanks to Stephen Fry)

I'm reading Mr Fry's "The Ode Less Travelled", and alongside enjoying the poems of others that he shares and learning about different poetic forms, I'm also doing the exercises that he sets, to have a go at writing poems of some of the diverse forms.

And so to exploit a particular feature of this dark age, I shall post some of my efforts to this blog.

Here is a rough draft of a villanelle:


To walk the line too quick to end,
The days with our experience fill,
Earth's life is but a fickle friend.

Each day, what breaks we cannot mend
and bright fresh sparks does habit kill,
To walk the line too quick to end.

Unto the grave our birth does send,
Hearts that now throb, time shall still,
Earth's life is but a fickle friend.

Yet God makes move eternal trend
and entropy energy ever to thrill
to walk the line too quick to end.

For mankind Christ the rules can bend,
Cold void made pure with love's good will,
Earth's life is but a fickle friend.

With higher powers our life can spend
As gloried hope sweets bitter pill
To walk the line too quick to end,
Earth's life is but a fickle friend.