Eternity’s Desire

In 2009 I participated in the Writer’s Digest PAD Challenge – writing a poem a day from prompts they provided for the 30 days of April. What is it with me and these 30 day challenges, eh?

Anyway, one of the prompts we were given was to write a Sestina. Well, I’d never heard of this form before, and quite frankly, when I looked at it I wished I never had. There’s no rhyme, no syllable count, but there is a strict pattern to it. But I persevered and it set me on the path of my love of forms.

The Sestina was invented by a French troubadour named Arnaut Daniel. The troubadours first appeared in southern France in the twelfth century. Their name is extracted from the verb trobar, meaning "to invent or compose verse." They were famous, celebrated, much in fashion, and eventually very influential on the European poetry of the next few centuries. They sang - their poems were always accompanied by music - for French nobles such as the Duke of Aquitaine and the Count of Poitiers, and competed with one another to produce the wittiest, most elaborate, most difficult styles.

The Sestina was one of several forms in the complex, elaborate, and difficult closed style called trobar clus. It consists of 39 lines divided into 6 sestets and one triplet, called the envoi. It is normally unrhymed - instead, the six end words of the first stanza are picked up and reused as the end words of the following stanzas in a specific order. In the envoi, one end word is buried in each line, and one is at the end of each line.

Lines may be of any length, although their length is usually consistent in a single poem. The six words that end each of the lines of the first stanza are repeated in a different order at the end of lines in each of the subsequent five stanzas. The particular pattern is given below. (This kind of recurrent pattern is "lexical repetition".)

The pattern of word repetition is as follows, where the words that end the lines of the first sestet are represented by the numbers "1 2 3 4 5 6":

1 2 3 4 5 6 - End words of lines in first sestet.
6 1 5 2 4 3 - End words of lines in second sestet.
3 6 4 1 2 5 - End words of lines in third sestet.
5 3 2 6 1 4 - End words of lines in fourth sestet.
4 5 1 3 6 2 - End words of lines in fifth sestet.
2 4 6 5 3 1 - End words of lines in sixth sestet.
Three line envoi using end words in the middle and end of each line

Possible formats for the envoi are:
1-2, 3-4, 5-6
1-4, 2-5, 3-6
6-2, 1-4, 5-3
or 6-5, 2-4, 3-1

And here’s the example I wrote to help you understand the form. This is only the fourth Sestina I’ve ever written, but I think I’m getting the hang of it. :-)

The words I used are:
1 Eternity 2 Desire 3 Moon 4 Lies 5 Regret 6 Ashes


Eternity’s Desire

You pledged me an eternity
Your eyes full of desire
But in the light of the full moon
I could see your words were lies
Spoken without regret
And our love turned to ashes

In my mouth, the taste of ashes
When I think of you and eternity
And if I have any regret
It’s the wasted desire
I felt for the lies
Spoken under the moon

I bathe in the light of the moon
As the world around me turns to ashes
And I feel like I’m buried in lies
That have built up over an eternity
Disguised as eternal desire
That does nothing but fill me with regret

A life that’s filled with regret
Stays in the shadow of the moon.
Knowing nothing of desire
The soul is covered in ashes
As the winding of eternity
Conceals humanity’s lies

I feel surrounded by your lies
But believe you’ll be the one to regret
Missing your chance at eternity
Blessed by the sanctified moon.
Instead you’ll have nothing but ashes
Where once there was desire

I will find a new desire
One unsullied by lies
Like the phoenix rise from the ashes
With nothing left to regret
And dance in the light of the moon
As I take my place in eternity

I live eternity with my heart’s desire
A blessed moon erasing lies
And all regrets are burned to ashes.