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?