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SESTINA


The SESTINA, a fixed from developed by the Troubadors of Provençal. The form consists of 6 six-line stanzas, and a three line envoi called a Tornada. The six end words of Stanza One are repeated as end words in all six stanxas, as well as in the Tornada, where they customarily appear two per line.

Traditional structure places the end words in a rigid pattern based on their position within the previous stanza. This order is 6,1,5,2,4,3. The modern Sestina generally foregoes this rigid structure, and allows the poet the freedom to order these words in any manner.

Contemporary poets often alter these end words by adding and subtracting suffixes, using homophones, and the inclusion of slant rhyme, all of which allow the poet to remain flexible while providing a sense of surprise and wonder, while maintaining the essential structure of the repetitive form.

 

 

Sand

Windows define the horizon
Their form spoken by each passing wind
An echoing counterpoint of sorrow
That fills the spaces between time
With the bitter sand
Of ancient regret

Does the glass ever sorrow
For the return to sand?
Or does it now encapsule time
Without regret
For fixed horizon
And brittle wind?

I experience time
With overwhelming regret
For self imposed horizon
And avoidance of all wind
I already wallow in the sorrow
Of my future as more sand

Unlike wind
I will howl my sorrow
To my limited horizon
Until I become that sand
No more regret
No more time

Frozen moment in time
Creates a new horizon
As thought escapes sorrow
And carries on the wind
The essential sandness of sand
And the shattering of regret

After sorrow
Beyond regret
All sand
Will ride the wind
And achieve a fresh horizon
Given time

Distant wolves articulate sorrows in token of the sea’s regret
Each passing wind carves moments in the sand
A town appears on the horizon, ghost town withered by time.

© Deane P. Goodwin

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