I have been reading The Ode Less Travelled, a book about writing poetry by Stephen Fry. It is really good. Some day, I might do a post about it, but today I am just publishing some of my recent poems.
I have been experimenting with some different forms. The poem below in written in a pastoral Italian form he talks about in the Ode Less Travelled – a ‘villanelle’.
The Sea
Changing as the seconds fly
Ever dappling rippling light
Steady while the years go by
Ever the wave’s retreating sigh
And the fair-foam frothing white
Changing as the seconds fly
Ever the pale-sand blanching dry
And the pale-winged sea birds’ flight
Steady while the years go by
Ever the cawing sea-gulls’s cry
And the sunny wave-top bright
Changing as the seconds fly
Ever the silvery waters lie
At the dropping of the night
Steady while the years go by
Still they lie – close to the sky
In the softly fading light
Changing as the seconds fly
Steady while the years go by.
Melted
Flakes and more flakes
Dropping – dropping
Softly – quickly
Carry on the air –
Dumb air of Winter
One little moment
Twirls them by – so
Large and soft
Indefinable
So many hundreds
Gathered in a sky!
How can it hold them?
Vast as it is!
Melted away now
Melted.
In this I tried to capture the endless, soft, unreal feeling of snow falling softly.
The Woods in March
The trees in silent sober beauty stood
Pale tree-trunks rising smooth from dead
And drying bracken – tawny gold – the wood
Half-bathed with moist sunshine. “See, tread
With softness lest the slightest stir you make
And all the golden sleeping woodland wake
Let not one fallen brown leaf rustle – break
No twig – be quiet and kick no stone.” Said she
So with most scrupulous care went we
And passed around a slender smooth-barked tree.
We saw two kinds of catkins lately out
The pussy willow, grey with her soft, soft touch
And hazel too before we turned about –
And they were cleanly yellow green. So much
Of beauty in that little wood
Wearing Springtime’s hood
Were she and I stood.
February Rain
Grey light – grey from a gray sky –
Cold as an empty hearth
Down the window crawl wet snakes
Joined by dashing drops.
Millions land in the blink of an eye – and
Have I thought for each?
Just the same as flitting fancies
Each insignificant speck
Joins five more, and grows into a
Drop. Through the pane
Febuary’s first pale crocuses lie flattened.
Full Moon
Smoother than a woman’s brow
With ghostly pearl perfection
Silvery was her gown of cloud – how
Silvery her complexion!
In the bleak and blasted sky
Of Winter – in that vast
Drifting waste of cloud – high
Over the blurred mountains – cast
In a perfect mould.
The lines in this fluctuate between four stressed beats (tetrameter) and only three. This is the way ballads are generally written.
The Eternal Yew
The charms we wove about the trunk
Will stand the test of wearing time
They’re braded – mingled into the branches
And strung from leaf to leaf to leaf
The knots pulled tight the ends entwined
About the wandering shadows
The wavering trembling whispering shadows
That darkly dance about the trunk
Around the bow their ends entwined
Where they will linger through all time
Far longer than the words on the leaf
Of a book – or memory on the branches
Dark branches of your mind – dark branches
Of the tree last longer far. Where shadows
About the sagging dream-green leaf
So many leaves, so thin, and round the trunk
Lie dusky and timeless, their ends entwined.
While roll on time and time and time
And if it ever faltered, time –
Then live these darkly mighty branches
On through emptiness – their ends entwined –
Then live and endlessly live on through shadows.
Then live and endlessly live on that trunk
Hung round with ribbon-like green leaf
The torn green fragments of a secret – leaf
On leaf like deeply layered time
That dance around the ghostly trunk
Of memory, and the strong dark branches
Of the mind. The shadows are entwined.
The wavering trembling whispering shadows.
You mighty roots that grasp round shadows
Of earth – you mystic hanging leaf
You shadows, shadows – the ends entwined
Where you will linger through all time
You great time-wielding lasting branches
And you, the heart of all – the trunk!
Keep living, dream-green leaf and branches
Live all through time, your ends entwined
And live the spell about the trunk of shadows.
That was a Sentina – a really complicated form which repeats the ‘hero words’ (the words at the end of the lines) in a special pattern. My hero words (repeated all through the piece) are branches, shadows, leaf, trunk, entwined, time.
Wow, this is so beautiful!!! I wish I could write poetry like that!
Thanks so much!
I spent a happy winter working through “The Ode Less Travelled”, doing the poetry homework in bed at nights. I’m glad you’ve enjoyed playing with form, too. I think it’s made your writing more taut. I particularly like the one about the sea.
Bina