The Bard: A Cento/Sestina or a Sestina/Cento!

 

 

 

 

"The Bard" is my perfect-rhymed cento/sestina (or sestina/cento), all lines taken verbatim from the works of William Shakespeare.

 

 

 

"The Bard" is included in two important anthologies, The Cento: A Collection of Collage Poems (Red Hen Press, T. Welford, Editor, 2011) and Book of Odd and Invented Forms (Fourth Edition), Lewis Turco, Editor, 2011.

It is included in my Canadian collection, Glad and Sorry Seasons (Biblioasis, 2014).

 

The Bard

 

Our hands are full of business: let’s away,

and on our actions set the name of right;

with full bags of spices, a passport, too,

for we must measure twenty miles to-day

when day’s oppression is not eased by night.

So come my soul to bliss, as I speak true.

 

If it appear not plain and prove untrue,

that so my sad decrees may fly away,

kill me to-morrow: let me live to-night!

Thou livest; report me and my cause aright.

Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day?

If thou say so, withdraw, and prove it, too.

 

Let me have audience for a word or two:

this above all: to thine ownself be true.

Yet I confess that often ere this day,

in cases of defence, ’tis best to weigh,

to look into the blots and stains of right,

in high-born words the worth of many a knight.

 

The mountain or the sea, the day or night –

one side will mock another; the other, too.

O, let me, true in love, but truly write

without all ornament, itself and true,

for fear their colours should be washed away,

as are those dulcet sounds in break of day.

 

The nightingale, if she should sing by day,

and she died singing it: that song to-night,

which by and by black night doth take away;

if she pertain to life, let her speak, too!

They would not take her life – is this not true?

O, blame me not, if I no more can write!

 

Never durst poet touch a pen to write:

we are but warriors for the working-day.

If what I now pronounce you have found true:

when the sun sets, who doth not look for night?

Please you, deliberate a day or two,

let thy fair wisdom, not thy passion sway.

 

There is no other way: do me this right –

and it must follow, as the night the day,

write till your ink be dry. O, ’tis too true.

 

 

 

 

 

Matryoshka

"Matryoshka" from my first collection, Lines of Flight, is based on a true story. It is one of my most reprinted sonnets, appearing in 14 by 14, Sonnetto Poesia, Soundzine, Writings, and Better Than Starbucks.  

 

Matryoshka

 

 

What made me buy the nested Russian doll

whose faded paint and fractured wooden frame

had doomed her to a yard sale? Had her fall

from grace inspired a longing to reclaim

for her, for fifty cents, some lost esteem?

Or would the curious plaything prove to be

a conversation piece? No, it would seem

I brought the pregnant outcast home for me.

 

For women I had tried so long to trace,

Matryoshka was a tangible motif;

same yet separate, I knew the face,

gave up each grievance, sanctioned every grief.

Restored, they stand here, echoing one another –

mother, daughter, mother, daughter, mother.

 

 

 

 

My sonnet, "Vermont Passage" was inspired by poet Deborah Warren's remark to me about the hillside clover in Vermont, and also by my impressions of the wildflowers along route 89 upon my first visit to Newburyport, Massachusetts. I would eventually take part in Powow River Poets workshops, readings, the Newburyport Literary Festival in 2018, and as a featured reader at the Edna St. Vincent Millay event in 2019.

 

Vermont Passage

 

For Deborah Warren

 

Wildflowers thrive and form, in mid-July,

a buoyant blue and gold receiving line

the length of Interstate Route 89,

as if to welcome friends and passers-by.

But high up in the hillside meadow teems

a purple floret whose divine perfume

makes one forget that roses are in bloom –

mellifluous, the stuff of summer dreams.

 

And when Vermont’s Green Mountains turn to white,

when northern folk see little of the sun,

before the sugar maple sap can run,

when better days attend each bitter night,

I breathe in honeyed memories of clover,

and winter, for a while at least, is over.