Sestina

Since time’s morning we all have seen the tower
In the far corners of each eye—
Its shape, its presence, was constant
And dark and cold as its steel pillars,
Which linked the earth to the aloft
As it left its hidden peak among the clouds.

How light and fragile seemed those clouds,
Yet how strong, as they embraced the pillars
Far above the common watcher’s eye
As if their undulations were what kept aloft
The gray, unmoving tower,
The only scaffolds to hold it constant.

But nothing in the cosmos is truly constant,
And nothing in the earth stays perpetually aloft,
Even the pillars
Of the groaning tower
As the wisps of the clouds
Began to pull away from the reach of the tower’s eye.

And how it burst, that eye
Of the suddenly trembling tower
As, from their place aloft
The fading clouds
Heard a promise of “I have always been constant”
From the hoarse vibrations of the mercury pillars.

But the wisps could not be persuaded, and the pillars
Erupted in a terrible shriek as the clouds
Strove to leave the tower
With a peaceful message as the constant
Jettisons from the tower’s erupting eye
Could not remain aloft.

Built, shaped, constructed to hold itself aloft,
No one considered that the tower could not stay constant
Upon the dissipation of those clouds—
First fell, screaming, the eye
And then the buckled, madly clawing pillars,
And so collapsed the tower.

And still the tower’s wreckage remains at the edge of our eye,
The constant twisting, twitching of the pillars,
As they feebly reach to the aloft and the faded strands of the clouds.


Villanelle

This is the tower’s story,
Witnessed by my truthful kin,
Such as it was told to me.

A desperate pursuit made he
After his love, to save him
This. Is the tower’s story

More than it had seemed to be?
What’s about’s seldom within,
Such as it was told to me.

Even though an elegy,
A tale of truth beneath skin
This is. The tower’s story

Is harsh memento mori
For a soul who’s always been—
Such as it was told to me.

Was such a thing meant to be?
Surely, not to have been seen.
This is the tower’s story,
Such as it was told to me.



Sonnet

I heard recountings of profound despair,
About a man with eye and tongue of brass.
The day before, I’d seen his icy stare;
The evening next, his story came to pass.

How strange, distressing, were those words to hear
Of how his love accepted death’s kind call;
The screaméd pleas and how he drew her near—
Unheard, unseen, his anguish wrings my soul.

The image of his twisted countenance
Within my mind—his visage turned to red—
Invades my every thought. What cruel romance,
How he caressed her hands as she lay dead.

And how that icy stare seems now to me—
What once was brass is naught but mercury.


Pantoum**

He would do all to be with her
As he pleaded,
Clinging to her arms
Like a lost child.

And he pleaded,
His eyes streaming
Like a lost child’s,
And told her,

“Is my screaming
Not enough to stop you?”
And, bolder,
“I can’t let you go.”

“What’s enough to stop you
From telling me,
‘I can’t let you know?’”
She starkly asked.

“You’re telling me
What I have never said;
Be stark—we basked
In trust and love;

What have I ever said
That burns enough to turn
Our trust and love
To pain and death?”

“The worlds so roughly turn—
We could not stop the dread machines
Of pain and death
As long as we live.”

He could not stop the dread machines—
Clinging to her arms,
How long could he live?
He would do all to be with her.