Sestina Poems
Let Me Count The Waves
by Sandra Beasley
You must not skirt the issue wearing skirts.
You must not duck the bullet using ducks.
You must not face the music with your face.
Headbutting, don't use your head. Or your butt.
You must not use a house to build a home,
and never look for poetry in poems.
In fact, inject giraffes into your poems.
Let loose the circus monkeys in their skirts.
Explain the nest of wood is not a home
......
Sestina
by Elizabeth Bishop
September rain falls on the house.
In the failing light, the old grandmother
sits in the kitchen with the child
beside the Little Marvel Stove,
reading the jokes from the almanac,
laughing and talking to hide her tears.
She thinks that her equinoctial tears
and the rain that beats on the roof of the house
were both foretold by the almanac,
......
Sestina: Altaforte
by Ezra Pound
Loquitur: En Bertrans de Born.
Dante Alighieri put this man in hell for that he was a
stirrer-up of strife.
Eccovi!
Judge ye!
Have I dug him up again?
The scene in at his castle, Altaforte. "Papiols" is his jongleur.
"The Leopard," the device of Richard (Cúur de Lion).
I
......
Six Words
by Lloyd Schwartz
yes
no
maybe
sometimes
always
never
Never?
Yes.
Always?
No.
......
Sestina
by Dante Alighieri
I have come, alas, to the great circle of shadow,
to the short day and to the whitening hills,
when the colour is all lost from the grass,
though my desire will not lose its green,
so rooted is it in this hardest stone,
that speaks and feels as though it were a woman.
And likewise this heaven-born woman
stays frozen, like the snow in shadow,
and is unmoved, or moved like a stone,
......
Peace
by Mario Odekerken
At dusk,I sit beneath a quiet sky,
my thoughts as still as any weathered stone.
No sound but wind,no ripple in the water-
just breath,the weight of stillness in my hand.
The world withdraws into a deeper silence,
and I begin to follow its old path.
There is no map to mark this kind of path,
no signs etched into the open sky,
only the hush,the gentle pull of silence
......
Sestina with Six Random Words
by Alexander Wolff
I was bragging to my friend Hadleigh that I slept with a model
named Jesse. As I drove back home, the insurance
company called, telling me I was an uninsured motorist.
It didn’t surprise me, for I had pledged
to stop using insurance, believing it a scam designed
by Sam. Although, this was only the first in the series
of events that night. It was late October — the start of the World Series.
On the radio, Hendrick’s Autos flaunted their makes and models.
Dusk danced across the sky, decaying, as if it were a prismatic design
......
Sestina: Altaforte
by Ezra Pound
Loquitur: En Bertrans de Born.
Dante Alighieri put this man in hell for that he was a
stirrer-up of strife.
Eccovi!
Judge ye!
Have I dug him up again?
The scene in at his castle, Altaforte. "Papiols" is his jongleur.
"The Leopard," the device of Richard (Cúur de Lion).
I
......
Six Words
by Lloyd Schwartz
yes
no
maybe
sometimes
always
never
Never?
Yes.
Always?
No.
......
Sestina Of The Tramp-Royal
by Rudyard Kipling
Speakin' in general, I 'ave tried 'em all,
The 'appy roads that take you o'er the world.
Speakin' in general, I 'ave found them good
For such as cannot use one bed too long,
But must get 'ence, the same as I 'ave done,
An' go observin' matters till they die.
What do it matter where or 'ow we die,
So long as we've our 'ealth to watch it all --
The different ways that different things are done,
......
