I like the first five best myself Arthur. Their light verse seems to echo
the castles I've visited.
The triolet, rondeau and sonnet seem less substantial to me. Perhaps they're
forms that need more pathos, or more drama, to work well. I don't know -
when I've sketched things in forms that I may have only tried for one poem
I've never thought of what I've come up with as more than a few lines...
(but I may have lifted the lines and used their phrases later and
elsewhere!)
The Pantoum's interesting too. But I must have a thing these days about
inversions! I can't see the words "westward stream" without wanting to see
"stream westwards"!
Bob
>From: arthur seeley <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: New sub: The Castle
>Date: Sun, 9 Mar 2003 07:06:00 -0000
>
> The Castle : An Exercise in Form.
>
>Haiku
>
>Light through arrow loops.
>Downy swoop of silent shadow-
>squeals in the dark.
>
>Lu-shih
>
>Walls that towered to the sun,
>fallen to rubble, heaps of golden stone.
>Shadow that sheltered a tidy market town
>home for bats, the broken bits of night.
>
>Clerihew
>
>A castle
>can be a parcel
>of trouble
>or rubble.
>
>
>Limerick
>
>If you visit the castle of Glamis
>Beware of Macbeth and his army
>You’ll have your throat cut
>By his wife, who’s a nut
>And he recites poems. They're all barmy!
>
>Cinquain
>
>Castle’s
>high sandstone walls
>crumble to fine gold sift
>under the soft persistent fists
>of Time.
>
>Triolet
>
>In sunlit corners of this broken court
>every spring some snowdrops grow.
>Why and by whom have they been brought
>to sunlit corners of this broken court?
>
>I cannot guess the reasons but I know
>it was a handsome kindly thought
>that every spring some snowdrops grow
>in sunlit corners of this broken court.
>
>
>Rondeau
>
>Soft and slow along the walls the mosses grow.
>Houses of the town beneath us row on row
>like children huddled round a mother.
>No one seems to care or bother
>now, it’s left to crumble, ransomed to time the foe.
>
>Built against marauding barons long ago
>it crumbles slowly into streams that flow
>around its motte, like arms around a lover,
>soft and slow.
>
>In winter when the raw winds blow
>and deck the walls with swags of snow
>ice-bannered ramparts remind me of another
>time another place when folk would gather
>to see the castellan and lady a-hawking go,
>soft and slow.
>
>
>Sonnet
>
>High, black, ragged against a winter’s moon
>the ruined castle broods beside the town
>built against the terror of times long gone
>but all its grey walls are tumbled down.
>
>The market bustled beneath its aegis
>now only foreign tourists come and stare;
>ragged relic of the Middle Ages,
>the busy townsfolk scarcely know its there.
>
>Quarried by farmers, plundered by drapers,
>surveyed by surveyors, dug over for knowledge,
>subject for research, lost in dry papers,
>dissertation for some southern college.
>
>Time and its whims have made it redundant,
>the battered wards and the keep recumbent.
>
>
>
>
>
>Pantoum
>
>Where moon and solemn silence fall
>over the ragged turrets of the keep
>moss has plugged the crumbled wall;
>all but the owl and bat are locked in sleep.
>
>Over the broken turrets of the keep
>the swept clouds westward stream
>all but the owl and bat are locked in sleep;
>the beech and hazel mutter in a dream.
>
>The swept clouds westward stream,
>the moon is hid and then the winds unveil.
>The beech and hazel mutter in a dream
>of remnants, debris littering the dale.
>
>The moon is hid and then the winds unveil
>as the castle melts, decays to broken stones
>of remnants, debris littering the dale,
>flesh picked clean now, only yellow bones.
>
>As the castle melts, decays to broken stones,
>moss has plugged the crumbled wall.
>Flesh picked clean now, only yellow bones
>where moon and solemn silence fall.
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