Strawberry Raid Sestina
For the Laurel Sponsored Prize Display at Cudgel Wars last year, I wrote a set of triads. For the same at Strawberry Raid this year, I wrote a sestina. Sestinas are a slight step away from my usual sonnets, but still use iambic pentameter (although my metre isn't strong in any case). I find them to be an excellent form for exploring a concept - in this case, the feeling that the campsite changes shape, somehow, as it gets dark. This one is specific to the site at Sigginstown, with its rooks and herons, but I've felt the same about campsites elsewhere too.
The sestina is a medieval form, originating in Old Occitan in the 12th Century. The first English sestinas occur quite late, not until 1579, and it didn't really take off as a form in English until the late 19th century. Obviously, I'm writing in English here, as I am for almost all my poetry.
The sestina doesn't use rhymes, but instead has repeated end words. If the lines of the first six-line stanza end in words 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, then the second stanza's lines end in 6, 1, 5, 2, 4, and 3. This continues for six stanzas and then ends with a three-line stanza in which all six words occur, two per line. So:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 6, 1, 5, 2, 4, 3 3, 6, 4, 1, 2, 5 5, 3, 2, 6, 1, 4 4, 5, 1, 3, 6, 2 2, 4, 6, 5, 3, 1 (6, 2) (1, 4) (5, 3)
I haven't settled on a good name for this one yet, so it's just: Strawberry Raid Sestina
The shape of the world should not move nor shift. The earth indeed stays still, but there's a change That comes at night, in dark, and when the fires And lanterns light the camp. The slope of land Becomes a line of shadow, and the sky Gives shape to all that stands on field or track. Nothing has moved, nothing true, but I track - by sight, not sound or scent - some kind of shift From where I sit, and stare into the sky. This year, this time, I anticipate the change. It does not creep; it darts over the land And it comes on, more or less, with the fires. Not with their lighting, but when the fires Catch the eye, stand out, when the eye can track Their flare against the twilight, when the land And the trees and castle blend, there's that shift Where there's a turn, and clearly there's a change And the herons cry home against the sky. The crows are moving too. The croak, the sky Not black with them, but dotted, as the fires Push through their alteration, their soft change And people walk between the tents, the track That was not there a day ago does shift, Become a path, a way across this land. And as those skylit birds come in to land And join the earth from out the dimming sky, I try to see if others see the shift That happens around them as the bright fires Define the shape of things. No more the track, A daylight thing, now fire to fire the change. Not everyone sees it clear, this eves-change. But I think all feel it, as the hard land Becomes soft, and emotions softer track, And forgiveness is easier with sky That's dark, and when past ills go to the fires, And it's not just the land, but all that shifts. Our feet on the track, following the change, We feel that soft shift, the softness of land As the bright day-sky gives to dark and fires.
