Let the sestina begin;
A French form of some complexity
That puzzles the mind of the poet
And causes some scratching out with his pen,
As if his poem has fleas.
Really, the end words do leap about so.
He is undaunted, so
Let him begin.
(Blast those flaming fleas!)
He thinks he can deal with the complexity
By shepherding the words like sheep in a pen.
A good sheepdog would be of great help to the poet.
I am the poet
And I am in control of this poem, so
Let my pen
Begin
To defeat the complexity
By splattering ink over the fleas.
Bother! Now the angry ink-soaked fleas
Attack the poet
Adding to the complexity
By biting him on the buttocks, so
He scratches furiously before deciding to begin
Again with the pen.
He now realises that the sheep in the pen
Have fleas.
After his fourth gin he decides to begin
Again, and again, and again, being a resolute poet
But now slightly sozzled, so
This adds to the complexity.
Shit! He can no longer pronounce 'complexity'
Instead he has a stab at it with his pen
But misses and pours himself another gin so
That he no longer feels the flaming fleas
And, being a perfectly pissed poet,
He now lets a lurid avalanche of alliteration begin.
The sestina is a real so-and-so because of its complexity.
My advice is to begin by not writing in pen.
Beware! The irritation of the fleas confounds the poet.
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Author Notes
Sestina
A complex French verse form, usually unrhymed, consisting of six stanzas of six lines each and a three-line envoy. The end words of the first stanza are repeated in a different order as end words in each of the subsequent five stanzas; the closing envoy contains all six words, two per line, placed in the middle and at the end of the three lines. The patterns of word repetition are as follows, with each number representing the final word of a line, and each row of numbers representing a stanza:
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)
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