Sestina: the Rite of Pain

1

Light diffusing icicles in rain

minor melody dripping in plain sight

mist effusion, this arresting pain

felt-for meaning in an empty rite

incense of memory, forgotten clotted air

in this mockery of spring, this rotten-blossomed pear.

2

O, those days, we thought we were a pair.

Two true gods in love, over love to reign.

Witness this: even true divinity can err.

Consider this: the text of any poem you could cite,

the text of any lines that you could write:

attention getting stones to rock a window pane.

3

And in the silence, nothing but to pay, and

yet if nothing’s left, for what am I the payer?

So is it so that that that is is right?

No would be a hauling on the rein.

So let it go, let yes take you to the site

Of all this dripping sorrow ere

4

brown unbudding branches are the all the heir

gets; the basses of the air groan out in pain

whatever litany of dripping words you may recite—

unless the heated blade of song can pare

the ice of loss into sounding rain

or modulate the melody as would a guilded wright

5   

to make the magic of the song that can the wrong aright,

inscribed in drops upon the fabric air.

If all things end, so ends the fleeting reign:

so let the melting music swell a peaon

and let the melting winter blow the pear

with compensatory wisdom, some insight

6

some phrasal consolation in my sight

some recollected truth beyond the rotten rite

like a child’s lost lesson from the dead old pere.

If sorrow is the death of love, the heir’s

Inheritance must be the sensing of the pain.

Then let the dead tree bloom in all this rain.

 

Envoie

Melting ice’s tears, the smell of blooming pear

within the sigh to know the right of pain:

let go the rein in incense sounding air.