Question:

Is this an obvious Sestina?

by  |  earlier

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You remember my lovely assistant, don’t you?

From high on the stage, the curtain leaking light

The assistant moved from shadow to the illuminated figure

Was this the marvellous sight, on which they laid claim?

The oft hallowed box where his daggers would plunge,

or a view from a window, a place they once stayed

A place to revisit, a place yet to come to?

In the depth of recall, memories conjuring too

Avoiding the topics of which they made light

A host of appraisers, humourless and staid

Themselves locked in search, of what they could not figure.

But as low as the neckline of her dress did plunge

His conscience slept below the full depths of his claim.

How easy he’d found the resolve to declaim

all the shared points and ports where their ship had heaved to.

Where both held the anchor, as seaward they’d plunge

Gazing back up the chain, to the rippling light.

How he held back, to wash in the wake of her figure

The once fair silhouette, where he wished he had stayed.

Their ship in the dry-dock, uprooted and stayed

Held firmer than ever by the wood-chocked claim

of family, friends and the forgotten figure

of a shared lapsed deity, they once clung to.

How feint the vista of that promised light

from that silt clogged sea-bed, of their perilous plunge.

Whether silt-clogged or flat tiled, wherever the plunge,

the leap as a unit, was the image that stayed.

The tidal migrations of saccharine and light

The beach-combers looting and staking their claim

for salvage of anything worth clinging to.

The remnants of ruin of their once stately figure.

And what of comparisons with your good lady’s figure?

The lost fertile furrow into which your seed you’d plunge.

Would she have the same disappointment now, too?

To her, is your countenance also now staid?

Would she in fact, take the contract just as you claim

hold it close to the element, till it catches light?

Figure it out for yourself, why either stayed.

Was the plunge through the mire as dire as they claim?

Or did the light behind the curtain, switch off and on too?

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  1. A very good write of a difficult form.  I like the modernity and the envoie.

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