Tuesday 10 March 2015

Sestina

Among these browning blossoms, a revolution 
stirs the surface of this stagnant water.
Or is it just the circle of my eyes?             
There is no touch or whisper of a wind,
there is no movement in these dying leaves,
their stillness - weighted.            

Every seep and current weighted            
in weekly, monthly, yearly revolutions.
Can such prisoners ever leave, 
or are they floaters, drowned by water
their flicker snuffed out by the wind?    
Who can read these eyes?         

Brimming with a multitude of eyes,        
water with their whiteness weighted,   
their stillness calls for the wind,                
their pulchritude for revolutions.                          
None should fear to sink beneath the water      
though their skin be thinner than leaves.            

A blanket generation of dead leaves      
rustles its crinkled lack of eyes  
and hems around the very water
which fattened them till fully weighted,
then pried them off with a half revolution           
as each stem snapped in the wind.         

Fury of an autumn wind                               
shake these empty, helpless leaves,      
rouse them in ghostly revolution,            
a delight to every burning eye, 
else they will stay forever weighted       
and clog the brackish water.      

Rumbling tumult of distant water            
carried in the approaching wind.                            
We can’t have long to wait         
for the bursting of banks and ripping of leaves,                 
when electric fires open their eyes         
in the rain’s lash and the cyclone’s revolution.     

Under the dead leaves,
beneath the stagnant water of your eyes,
is there a revolution?

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