Sestina: Weren’t We One
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 windowpane.
3
And in
the splattered sound, something but to pay, and
even if
there’s nothing’s there, still I am the payer.
No need
to ask: is it wrong or is it right.
Nothing slows
from pulling on that rein.
The
ground below the window see 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 back into sounding rain
or
modulate the melody as would a gilded wright
5
to make
the magic of the song that can the time aright,
inscribed
in drops upon the fabric air.
If all
things end, so ends the fleeting reign:
so let
the melting music swell a paean
and let
the rotten blossom yield a pear.
Compensatory
wisdom, flowering insight
6
some
phrasal consolation to recite
some
recollected truth within the rotten rite
like a
child’s lost lesson from the dead old père.
If
sorrow is the death of love, the heir’s
Inheritance
must just be the pain.
Then let
the dead tree live in all this rain.
Envoie
Melting
ice’s tears, the smell of blooming pear
within
the sigh to know the rite of pain:
Let go
the rein in incense sounding air.
