[stylist] Sestina - "Richard III Professes Genetics"

[William L Houts]

Hi Pepples,

Here's a poem I wrote about fifteen years ago.  It's a sestina, which 
are notoriously difficult to get right, even surpassing sonnets.  The 
reason is that the form first appeared in southern France during the 
12th century, when they were used in duels between rival troubadours.  
So the form has legs, has we put it nowadays. The focus of this poem is 
Richard III, the English king who murdered his nephews in the Tower of 
London.

OH yes, and here's a little info on sestinas.  They feature six stanzas, 
each line ending in one of six words.  The first stanza would have the 
form ABCDEF, the next stanza with the same end words but in a different 
order.  The final stanza is called an envoi, and ends with three lines, 
each line containing two of the featured end words.  It's devilishly 
hard to finish even a bad sestina; especially in English.  Anyway, 
here's mine.


---




Richard III Professes Genetics


I come before you now, the very root and chromosome

of sin immured in public flesh.Our sleek and horselike

State awakens from its dream of law to fevered choking;

and I, the phlegm that issues out in lieu of prayer appealing

reason, God or hell, proclaim an order roisterous

and small:the rule of DNA, that mighty lord and curly.

Who made the foot malformed?The hair upon it curly,

stiff or straight?That silent king the chromosome

commands it all.And if the blood is roisterous

or chastened as a saint; the face, of horselike

plainness, or made so maid or boy might say:appealing!

--it's all the law of tiny inner seeds.I'm choking

on the truth of it; but now you'll find me choking

back a bastard glee.I've got you by the curly

hairs, my better favored coz.I'm not appealing,

no, nor never was, the subject of my lord the chromosome

in wrath.Don't quarrel now, y those boys your eye has always found appealing

fall to you by force.The righteous mob is roisterous,

but swiftly tamed, for who can charge a spoiled moral chromosome?

Or if you find your loving fingers slowly choking

nephew throats--be free of shame!You serve a lord morecurly

quaint and ancient thanthe serpent in the tree:of horselike

common sense and twice the wile.For double helix, horselike,

graceful, races through your deepest streams, appealing

to the Ithat eats and sleeps and screws, and courts the curly

head of faith to smash it in.Your ruddy roisterous

flesh is wise to turn away from pale heaven's choking

news.The self is home.Salvation's in the chromosome.

Therefore, cousin, claim the credo Chromosome, so appealing

in it's sleek and horselike honesty, and see your roisterous

nephews choking...their holy mouths an O...their lashes curly.







WLH







-- 
"Let's drink a toast now to who we really are."

           --Jane Siberry