Tag: Villanelle

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Poems

The Mountain – A Villanelle

The Mountain
There stands the snow-capped mountain, grave and bleak.
At the mountain’s foot are crows, black as coal;
hard-won triumph awaits you at the peak.

The dawn of the trial holds its mystique:
a challenge to pioneers who are bold.
There stands the snow-capped mountain, grave and bleak.

The trailblazer starts with certain technique,
but must break himself to make himself whole:
hard-won triumph awaits you at the peak.

By dusk of the trial, the sun seems weak.
The long day has grown dark, starless, and cold.
There stands the snow-capped mountain, grave and bleak.

But fight on, through the pain, the doubt, and shrieks.
Fight on, through the dismantling of your soul.
Hard-won triumph awaits you at the peak.

Keep hope inside when you’re too tired to speak,
and pay with your spirit every steep toll.
There stands the snow-capped mountain, grave and bleak.
Hard-won triumph awaits you at the peak.

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Poems

The Ancient River – A Villanelle

The Ancient River
From a ridge, looking to a valley below—
one hazeled and shadowed by the sunrise,
with willows bending in the wind’s soft blow—

is an old river with a hooked oxbow.
Over it, the sun scumbles the cold skies
with her honeyed rays and pale, warming glow—

snuffing the stars, shortening the shadows,
eliciting a wood thrush’s sweet cries,
and thawing grass in the frosty hollow.

Beyond the horizon the river goes.
While ever-winding and wild its way lies:
now eddying in banks of ice and snow;

now coursing across a taiga’s meadows;
now sharpening a granite cliff’s sheer rise;
now beating rapids with its ceaseless blows.

Gone now are night and its fine indigo.
The gold sun illuminates the vale’s skies,
lighting the ancient river as it flows
into a future that nobody knows.

Categories
Poems

Seraphs in Black

“Seraphs in Black” is a villanelle, a type of French form poetry.  My poem is about the coming of the infamous four horsemen of the apocalypse.

800px-Gustave_Dore_-_Death_on_the_Pale_Horse
Gustave Doré – Death on the Pale Horse, 1865.

 

Villanelle – The villanelle has a strict structure.  There are five verses, each with ten syllables.  There are also two end rhyme words, in this case “sun” and “come”.  The rhyme scheme is as follows:

A1 b  A2          - Lines in first tercet.
  a  b  A1          - Lines in second tercet.
  a  b  A2          - Lines in third tercet.
  a  b  A1          - Lines in fourth tercet.
  a  b  A2          - Lines in fifth tercet.
  a  b  A1 A2       - Lines in final quatrain.

 

Seraphs in Black

“Then another angel came out of the temple
and called in a loud voice to him who was
sitting on the cloud, ‘Take your sickle and
reap, because the time to reap has come,
for the harvest of the earth is ripe.’ So he
who was seated on the cloud swung his
sickle over the earth,
and the earth was harvested.”
-Revelation 14: 15 NIV Bible

Against the rising beauty of the sun,
shimmering over an owl’s watchful eyes,
the apocalyptical black dead come.

Lightless labyrinths of deathly ebon
concealing nightmare beasts, dichotomized
against the rising beauty of the sun.

From trees, then across plains, desolate, dun,
thunder sixteen hooves guided by blind eyes
the apocalyptical black dead come.

Who race from four corners, the bloodless ones
taking, by frozen touch, their living prize
against the rising beauty of the sun.

They, in yawning hoods, take every one
judged guilty of slaying, sadism, lies;
the apocalyptical black dead come.

Who, like bright artists dabbing oils upon
canvases of horizons and dawn skies
against the rising beauty of the sun,
the apocalyptical black dead come.