Liberties Taken: a sestina

Today is my official Write Your @ss Off Day, so here's one of the results. This is my entry for the Big Ole Poetry Challenge the Pollinatrix has got going on her blog. As part of today's eight-hour writing marathon, I'm also working on a new science fiction short story (going well), some nonfiction travel articles (going worse) and, of course, the novel. Maybe I'll put up a report card or something later on and tell you how I did. But in the meantime...

Liberties Taken: a sestina

And once again, they come inside to find                                                     

that time did not see fit to wait, and fly                                                        

across the road to fields of light and dance                                                   

their time away. The dancers do not see                                                        

the answers which can help. And soon they break                                        

and scatter far, until the next new day.                                                         

For endless nights, these folk who dream by day                                         

and waste their nights in revelry, and find                                                    

no dreams, no gold, no life, they soon will break.                                         

But we who sit behind the walls and fly                                                       

on wings which we in dreams can use, we see                                              

the light of years, the life ahead, and dance.                                                 

In time we grasp the stems of hopes in dance,                                              

climb up the stalk to flowers, gleaming days.                                                

For now, we sit at home and work. I see                                                       

the happy land that only I can find.                                                              

I work and slave to someday go, and fly                                                      

into the clouds, where windows shake, and break.                                       

Between that land and I lie years. It breaks                                                  

my heart and wounds my mind. I do not dance                                            

to think of what is there. Someday to fly,                                                     

I do not wish to live on Earth. The days                                                       

go by, as slow as snails. I cannot find                                                                       

the light, the hope, the dream I once could see.                                            

So time I waste, and dreams I spurn. You see                                              

in me a lazy man, with faith which breaks                                                     

in toil and sweat. I think and dream, but find                                                           

no reason, purpose worth the strife of days.                                                  

I dawdle, treading water, scorn the dance,                                                   

Forget  that once back then I dreamed to fly.                                                

I do not want my liberties to fly                                                                    

away against my will. I want to see                                                               

the hour when I achieve my goals, the day                                                   

when all I worked for comes to me and breaks                                             

the doors and windows down, and I can dance.                                           

The toil of ages dies. My dreams I find.                                                        

Thence comes my life. I find that I can fly,                                      

I find my feet can dance, my eyes can see,                                       

my hands can break. In time will come the day.

FOOTNOTE: Just in case you're wondering, I stuck to the rules. This is a proper English sestina: thirty-nine lines (six six-line stanzas and a tercet), all of which end with one of six words. Each stanza's end-words are properly ordered, and (this is the part I decided to grit my teeth over) the poem is written entirely in iambic pentameter. W.H. Auden, eat your heart out.

I also want to say, right here and now (just so I won't be like this idiot), that this poem was inspired by Robert E. Howard's short story The Tower of the Elephant. In it, the elephant god says, "Let me be free of this cage of broken blind flesh, and I will once more be Yogah of Yag, morning-crowned and shining, with wings to fly, and feet to dance, and eyes to see, and hands to break." I always thought that was a lyrical turn of phrase, even for Howard...and that's where I got four of this sestina's six end-words. Attribution over.