The Clowns Are Staying Home Today

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Canadian poet, coronavirus, COVID-19, Elaine Stirling, isolation, medieval Spanish fixed verse, quarantine, seasonal poetry, sestina

The clowns are staying home today. The crowds
have paid their chits, the popcorn gal has learned
her bit, to shake and salt, the tent pole’s
rigged, I’ve polished all my epaulets,
but something small and mean,
gargantuan, has taken down our show.

The beast, let’s call him Ovid, starts to show
his claws and sticky coronet in crowds
whose throats just itch a bit. It doesn’t mean
a thing, the bigwigs say. Have you not learned
that crying wolf is in your head? Let’s
all stay rational. Set up the poles,

we’ll make a go of it! The poles
of left and right who love to show
how much they know will never say, let’s
get along. Conflict brings the crowds.
It’s our best selling point! We’ve learned
to milk, to squeeze the teats of mean.

As a barker, though, I do not mean
to rattle this strange circus, bring the poles
down on our heads. I haven’t learned
yet—have you?—how to navigate a no-show
of a billion tents with rumbling crowds
who’ve nowhere left to go. Let’s

sit with this a while, please. She who lets
the river calmly pass respects the mean
whose curve now shapes the crowds.
Our global weight is snapping poles
in two, four, six, eight. A primal show
is playing to us all, the simple and the learned.

Oh, the things we will have learned
when Gargantua has shat his last! Let’s
not forget who rules the inner show:
the human spirit, heart, who mean—
and ultimately do—well. Set up the poles,
sweet clowns. We’re expecting great crowds!

Author’s Note: This is a sestina, a medieval Spanish poetic form that uses a spiraling repetition of six end words to bring the reader through a vortex, and hopefully a new state of mind by the end.

May we all rise above this soon, and thrive!

© Elaine Stirling, 2020
The image comes from a 2014 blog entitled “Porque ríes, payaso?” Why do you laugh, clown? I don’t know the artist or the blogger’s name.

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Two Zero One Nine, Do You Read Me?

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#bringingbacktheglosa, Alain C. Dexter, Canadian poet, Elaine Stirling, glosa, medieval Spanish fixed verse

~~a glosa~~

We stand on the far promontory of centuries!
What is the use of looking behind us
since our task is to smash
the mysterious portals of the impossible?

—“Futuristic Manifesto”, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
~~~ 

Everything’s progression. You and me,
we’re both respective tips of blades
made sharp—or dull— by “Father looked
at life like this, and mother that, so I…” 
And if we die sans heirs, we all still
influence. Creation grinds our vagaries
to dust beneath my feet and frees
me from the appetite to disagree.
Keep up or don’t. Like Etruscan sentries,
we stand on the far promontory of centuries,

contributing with earthy bits and pieces
to terroir that grows a wine particular
to you, I find abrasive or a sickly sweet,
and yet, I’ll creep at night to taste again, in case
I missed some subtlety, and by a single peep
my concave/convex lens adjusts. It grinds us
into sharper focus or like plates tectonic
grates and makes distinct new continents:
Pangaea, panacea, panegyrics, all blinds us.
What is the use of looking behind us

if dread and praise have lock stepped 
so that nothing good I say to you
is heard, and every unintended slight
cuts to the bone? We’ve split apart 
and there’s a fact that oceans of affinity
will never trouble to correct. You dot, I dash,
we are a code no more in vogue, a set
of peeves like kitchen knives whose history
provokes no interest, even less of cash.
Since our task is to smash, 

as far as I can tell, the misbelievers
of their woebegotten truths so there’ll be
less of them, it stands to reason that by leaving you
to tilt your mills and me to grind my axes,
some third construct of our selves will
circumlocute to an axis made more plausible,
dare I say fun, with extra-sensate lubricants.
Meanwhile, the new year, like a chariot, rolls in,
its wheels, friction-free, making audible
the mysterious portals of the impossible.

~~~ 

Filippo Marinetti (1876-1944) was a poet and founder of the Italian Futurist movement. His work is brash and energetic and crackles with outrage. If Marinetti were alive today, social media would be all over him, and we’d be making or breaking friendships based on our alliance. Love it or loathe it, Post-modernism, too, will be history one day.

The image comes from a deck of inspirational cards called Art Oracles. This glosa proves to me they work. 

© Elaine Stirling, 2018

Romance in the New Year

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#bringingbacktheglosa, Canadian poet, Chilean poet, Elaine Stirling, Gabriela Mistral, glosa, love poems, medieval Spanish fixed verse

~~a glosa~~

Give me your hand and we will dance;
give me your hand and you will love me.
Like a single flower we will be,
like a single flower, nothing more.

—“Give Me Your Hand” (“Dáme la Mano”) by Gabriela Mistral

I dreamed of a friend in an orange checkered suit,
garish, clashing patterns, layered shades of yolk.
He milled, a hydrant, awkward midst the artsy party crowd.
Mortified, I hissed: why are you here?
He brightened. I’ve looked everywhere!
I thought I’d lost my chance.
The places I frequent are thin in godless times;
to be Olympian, hope and patience teeter.
But enough of that. Do you like my pants?
Give me your hand and we will dance.

He drew the blinds and took me in his arms.
I do not know the steps, I whined, and shuffled stiff.
They’re easy, he replied, though I often wonder if
the laurels people hang on strife
and being an enduring wife or husband
have not muddied things a bit. You see,
I do not need a maid and trust
you’ve had enough of joyless handymen
who’d nail your freedom to a tree.
Give me your hand and you will love me.

In time, my limbs began to melt
and I misplaced embarrassment. He led,
not like a general or a cold front pushing through
but like the tall straight mast of a merchant
sailing ship, with goods fair traded
in his hold. I think that we shall be,
he whispered in my ear, a golden pair
well matched, unfolding like the petals
of a rose, unprecedent, named Liberty.
Like a single flower we will be.

We woke entangled in a king-size bed
in Tuscany beneath an arbour
woven with bay laurel and anemone.
It must be spring, I reasoned, peering
‘neath the sheets at what he’d brought.
A lot! We laughed from bed to floor
and rolled across to where our view
of self-created destiny was clear.
We’d risen, both, to all that we adore
like a single flower, and nothing more.

Happy New Year, one and all!

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2017
Image of Tuscan garden design by Tim Street-Porter
Translation of “Dame La Mano” by Elaine Stirling

Nightfall of the Iguana, 2017

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#bringingbacktheglosa, #PabloNeruda, Canadian poet, Canto General, Elaine Stirling, medieval Spanish fixed verse, narrative poetry, New Year's poem 2017, seasonal poetry, Waldeen

~~a trilogy of glosas, concluded~~

The jaguar brushed leaves
with his phosphorescent absence,
the puma speeds through bracken
like devouring fire.

—from “Some Beasts”, Pablo Neruda,
in his epic Canto General,
translation by Waldeen

~~~

Not long ago, I found a strange map
in the ruins of a Maracaibo mansion,
the corners held down with rough-cut rubies
round and plump as duck eggs. Palimpsests
throbbed like blue-black veins across the chart—
illegible, unscarred by zealots and thieves.
I was told by the raggedy viejo who sleeps
underneath that the map and her routes
can be viewed by whoever believes
the jaguar brushed leaves

with her tail and the weasely dictator fell.
Claims such as these, they never sit well
with the rushed and the rational. Being neither
that day, I asked the old man to explain.
Once a year, he said, when defenses
deflate, humankind’s natural omniscience
is recalled and recorded upon this map
by shades of the recently departed who’ve
dropped all pretence of sorrow and vehemence.
With his phosphorescent absence

of political skews and racial miscues,
he hovered over the map, and with a finger
gnarled as ebony burl, he cruised along
routes I’d been known to frequent and
rubbed them all out, pronouncing every one
irrelevant. Time to accept there’s no fact in
the past with the power to deplete or subvert
your future. Take a page from the wild. When
the cayman’s not hungry, he’s loath to attack, and
the puma speeds through bracken.

Likewise, in the seam between moments—and
years—that appear to engender and justify
fear, you will find a clear trail laid out by the good
that is you and your boundaryless kin. You are
timely, well compassed. Walk on, begin.
And now it is time for this Job to expire.
He dropped the fat rubies into a sack.
He rolled up the mansion and with it the map,
spinning all he had shown me into a gyre
like devouring fire…

Wishing you a happy and magical New Year!

© Elaine Stirling, 2016

Inversions

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#AlainCDexter, #bringingbacktheglosa, Canadian poet, Elaine Stirling, medieval Spanish fixed verse

~~a glosa~~

I’ve been chewing darkness for so long
that I don’t know how to relearn joy;
I’ve been walking on lava for so many years
that my feet have lost all memory of fleece.

—Gabriela Mistral, “Nocturne of Consummation”

~~~

I made away today to the blue green
waters, slipping through crevasses of
musty inattention, past the trawling clusters
of opinionates despairing of their worlds
to reach this remnant of an iron age. I used to wait
on people I adored who saw in everything a wrong.
I danced my favourite red shoes off to prove the right
and bled in endless causes. Nearly lost my head
yearning, fruitless, where I never could belong.
I’ve been chewing darkness for so long

the fife bands of the mind with their penny
whistle tweedling, their tinpot repercussion
of past victimhoods march at my heels, wanting
me to swallow pain as good for me, agree to being
ground to ash until my joints and sinews ache.
Nothing tastes the way it did when I enjoyed
life, which qualifies my joining the insipid who bash
their heads against the walls of Plato’s cave. Their aim
is group concussion, so torpid and pointless a ploy
that I don’t know how to relearn joy.

And yet, now that I’m here
with only forward as my guide
and no convincing evidence that death
like the dusty fly-bit reign of Ozymandias
is worse or better than anything else,
I can turn to the cantankerous my deaf ears,
leave one-trick ponies to their sad politics,
appreciate the strides humanity has made,
has yet to make beyond the vale of fears.
I’ve been walking on lava for so many years

they know my name in Pompeii;
Popocatepetl is my winter home.
But for all the pumice I’ve endured,
the present me sees fresh at every turn
and boredom as the only borderlands.
Prosperous, sans alms or palms to grease,
I welcome the agora surrounding me
whose wares and wherewithals are
so abundant, true, intent on peace
that my feet have lost all memory of fleece.

© Elaine Stirling, 2016

New Habitants

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#bringingbacktheglosa, #CanadianPoet, Elaine Stirling, glosa, medieval Spanish fixed verse, PM Justin Trudeau, poetry

~~a glosa~~

Free thinker! Do you think you are the only thinker
on this earth in which life blazes inside all things?
Your liberty does what it wishes with the power it controls,
but when you gather to plan, the universe is not there.

—from “Golden Lines”, Gérard de Nerval, 1854,
translated by Robert Bly

~~~

I have a shelf in a quiet corner
of my house where books appear,
where spines with startling titles
wink like coin upon a beach
you think, at first, is crumpled foil.
I move in close. You little stinker,
where’d you come from? Didn’t I just
dust here yesterday? Three Bly collections,
now there’s four! Best not to blink or—
free thinker! Do you think you are the only thinker?

Laughter of the cynical sounds hardy
like a whack across the shoulder blades.
Well met, friend! One scarcely hears
the swallowed—gullible—or feels
the poisoned tip of reason penetrate.
The spy pretends to care. He brings
his little eye of mean intelligence,
then shrinks. He’s leather in the rain.
I know him well. I know he stings
on this earth in which life blazes inside all things.

Meanwhile, this new-found book,
the fourth or maybe fifth this year
falls open as do all things freshly
manifest, and from its novel pages
pour like immigrants through Ellis
and old Halifax onto these shoals
new habitants, thoughts never known.
Tides reverse. My salty backward-facing pillars
burble, angry, smash their begging bowls.
Your liberty does what it wishes with the power it controls,

The pale brittle shell of politics is broken.
Newborn patriots stand blinking in a sun
that’s never shone like this till now.
The rush of sea, the boats well laden
with supplies will dry all eyes
once sorrowful. You who swear
the age of miracles is dead, you’ll find your proofs.
Who negates life for afterlife, division
as your goal, we too will meet somewhere.
But when you gather to plan, the Universe is not there.

~~~

It’s been a while since I’ve written a glosa, but even longer since I’ve felt proud of my nation and government down to the cellular level. There’s been a sea change in Canada since the election of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. I see young people politically engaged for the first time. American friends post videos of our PM greeting new arrivals and say they feel the shift too, even through all their media clamour.

If glosas and form poetry appeal to you, please visit my website where you can learn more–and perhaps buy a book or two.

© Elaine Stirling, 2015
Robert Bly’s scintillating translation of Nerval comes from News of the Universe: poems of twofold consciousness, published in 1980.

The Morning Tree: A Glosa

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#bringingbacktheglosa, Elaine Stirling, Federico Garcia Lorca, glosa, medieval Spanish fixed verse, poetry

A tree of blood moistens the morning
where the new mother groans.
Her voice leaves crystals in the wound
and a diagram of bone in the window.

Meanwhile the coming light holds steady
and overtakes blank limits of fable that forget
the tumult of veins in its flight
toward the turbid cool of the apple.

–“Adam”, from Federico Garcia Lorca’s Primeras Canciones, 1922

~~~

The drop of ink that falls
absorbed between the fibers
of a parchment bed no pen
of yours or mine can resurrect
is spreading. Footprints of tar
pace a figure eight, delineating
nakedness that none of us can see
except in vaguely worded fantasies.
Debris across the mountain feels like warning;
a tree of blood moistens the morning

while I am still senseless
and too sensitive, I can refrain
from driving home some vagrant
point of fact no one has invited,
least of all that dead bore couple,
habit and experience. Phones
attached to hips are gathering
lone gods of randomness in droves.
Beggars with no credit offer loans
where the new mother groans

labouring to no avail, you’d think,
would set off some alarm—what child
is this? But no one’s claiming fatherhood,
and that fat bastard capital forgets
to keep his mouth closed when he chews.
What trickles from his chin is spooned
into tubes, shot straight into the veins
of pretenders to Cassandra, whose Trojan
never breaks and is still well tuned.
Her voice leaves crystals in the wound

that rub against synthetic outrage
waiting for its moment—that will never
come—of sweet approval. What tendency
is this to sprinkle vinegar upon a neighbour’s
olive grove that looks to be abandoned?
No succulent upon a fence can grow
when roots are parched of laissez-faire.
We subatomic dancers hate rehearsal,
swiftly leave behind our sold-out show
and a diagram of bone in the window.

So what did the rich man say
to the ferryman? I’ll be damned!
Only he wasn’t and still the river
foams in hopes that someone might
approach her self-creation
in a feathered cape with dignity.
Sir Walter and the puddle knew
Good Bess was on her way. All others
in the fractious crowd stayed petty.
Meanwhile the coming light holds steady

and the errant ink grows jittery
for having glimpsed the perfect
quill in V-formation flying over
Parry Sound. What if I dry
and flake apart before we two
can prove the world is wet?
The goose without a fleeting honk
flies on. She does not give her tail lightly.
Eggs of gold each day she brings to market
and overtakes blank limits of fable that forget.

Two things depreciate at the moment
of purchase: the second is worry.
Grinding mandibles on behalf of another
foretells a long decline toward mush
and not much else. No imagination
will fling you out of Eden. Paths of right
and wrong confuse the tenant farmer,
not the lord who views all he surveys
with potential, green and bright,
the tumult of veins in its flight.

Oh, sweet desire, now that you know
my name, let’s draw the canopy against
drunk beetles banging on their broken
schemes. Not all shells are suitable
for dyeing, though every word, I’m told,
will find its violin and grapple
for the pitch it hears in dreams
of paradise, giving way to the refugee,
nourished in his flight by sunlight’s dapple
toward the turbid cool of the apple.

~~~

This glosa borrows the first two stanzas of Garcia Lorca’s poem, “Adan”. The original Spanish can be found here. I’ve published a book of glosas, Dead to Rights, with an accompanying novella, Dead Edit Redo, which you can find here.

© Elaine Stirling, 2015
Translation by Elaine Stirling, © 2015
Image: pastel painting by Jill Wagner from http://www.jillwagnerart.com

The Tangled Sea

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#bringingbacktheglosa, Alain C. Dexter, Elaine Stirling, medieval Spanish fixed verse, narrative poetry

A Glosa

He wrapped her warm in his seaman’s coat
against the stinging blast;
he cut a rope from a broken spar
and bound her to the mast.

—“The Wreck of the Hesperus”, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

In the moribund night of a waning moon
on the crags of an island known as Doon
o’ Fara, moves the shadow of a weaver
from thatchéd hut to cliffs of spray and salt.
By day she spins and knits complicated
garments for the discerning and remote.
By all accounts, her wealth cannot be touched
or measured, though she started life as
property of one they called the Stoat.
He wrapped her warm in his seaman’s coat

and circled her, resentful, day and night.
Whate’er she thought or dreamed, he knew.
He brought her sprigs of violet and skeins
of tangled wool to while away her hours.
He filled her head with tales of dread and
disappointment that sealed her like a cast.
You are my legacy, he’d croon. When I am gone,
you’ll carry on my song of life’s depravity,
wrapped firmly in the wisdom of my past
against the stinging blast.

The weaselly man he traveled far, indulging
endless appetites. To ease his welcome home,
he filled the holds of ships with ivory bits and
wooden masks in such vast quantities that
Fara could not move inside her thatchéd prison.
Some folk say she clubbed him with a bar
of solid gold; others say he met his end
in polar realms—who knows? One day,
she hired a young man home from war.
He cut a rope from a broken spar

and built a sledge, and together they expunged
all traces of the dark controlling Stoat. With every
discard off the cliffs, her mind became more spacious.
The young man went his way, and she, devoted
to the doon, mastered patterns of abundance from
the roiling wind and sea. Eons since have passed,
and only in the darkening moon are glimpses of the
weaver seen. But on certain icy twilights, you may
catch the whiff of him who, loathing freedom, cast
and bound her to the mast.

~~~

You can learn more about the medieval Spanish form called glosa here.

© Elaine Stirling, 2015

there are no lost amigos

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#bringingbacktheglosa, Alain C. Dexter, Elaine Stirling, form poetry, glosa, Jack Kerouac, medieval Spanish fixed verse, poem for the New Year

~ a glosa in three parts ~

contact between you &
God means no church,
no society, no reform,
& almost no relationships,
& almost no hope in
relationships—but
kindness of hope inherent
in that what is good,
shall live & what is
bad, dies—Your
flesh will be a husk,
but yr. soul a star—

—from Jack Kerouac, Book of Sketches, Oct. 31, 1952

~~~

I

I see you’ve lined up
yr bottles for tonight’s
obliteration, hoping for a
hit, some kind of catapult,
another dis-appointment with
old friends & lovers banned
from sobriety. Let me tell you
now, friend, there are no
lost amigos, only grand
contact between you &

incomplete, you say,
without that special someone
every day a seek
& almost find, that time
in Jalisco if you hadn’t been
blind drunk, the search
would be long over, yeah?
insatiable she was,
only her crucifix made you lurch
God means no church

but enough about me—
how’s life treating you?
Have you learned yet
to take a compliment,
or does that old leather
strop torn
from its nail in the woodshed
still reek of bay rum?
do you still bleed his scorn?
no society, no reform

I’ve been there, I know.
All that shit between pretty
covers with my name
on it, I scrounged hard
from railyards—rusty
I-beams and wet pine chips
for a bed, alone
now I’m practically a saint—
all those women, a few drips,
& almost no relationships

II

so here’s the thing—
there are no dead poets
there is no dead anything
sure, mountains are melting
& a certain green salamander
won’t be unfurling her thin
pink tongue for termites anymore—
but it’s not yr doing; she’s done
here for now, a slow grin
& almost no hope in

wishing your fellow man
were not so immune
to yr discontent.
Life seems easier
when you can stir up
guilt in yr little grass hut
like a pot of beans
on low simmer—
hell, you can’t shut
relationships—but

you can confuse yourself
over & over like those old wooden
paddle toys with rubber ball
attached—k’bonk, k’bonk, k’bonk,
what’d I do? what’d I do? what’d I do?
short answer: nothing. A fine gent
you are, always will be.
Inner space, same as outer,
nothing lost, mis- or unspent,
kindness of hope inherent

but you’ve heard all this—
smoked it & wrote it
& sold it to a few
worse off than you. Maybe
it’s time to clear off those
shelves. They’ve been yr hood,
yr holy armor, for how long now?
No one wants a soldier with flat
feet. Letting go’s the only rood
in that what is good

III

So. Make friends with emptiness.
Yesterday’s om and a planet’s
worth of mountaintops
won’t save yr bored soul.
Practice saying, I am deep
& meaningful, leave the biz
of others to others
never ask them why
believe love and genius
shall live & what is

is. There’s no other
tense and no better
way to let go the tension.
Stop gluing name tags
to intolerance—gluten, lactose—
give up keeping score;
everything you look at
multiplies—boom, ka-ta-boom!
ignore
bad, dies—Your

the one in charge
of what comes around
& who stays away
but still,
we’re amigos to the end,
bro, through love & lust—
throw out the dishwater
from yr last best date—one day
you’ll smell, it’s not a healthy musk
your flesh will be a husk

I have to split soon.
You got tons of visitors
cuter than me lined up. I just
came to oil yr valves, give
the silver in yr irises a gleam.
The New Year isn’t far;
it’s continuous New Now. We’ll
meet again soon. You’ll see
that nothing leaves a scar—
but yr soul a star!

© Elaine Stirling, 2014
Image by Kara Bobechko, © 2014

Raining Frogs and Razor Blades

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#bringingbacktheglosa, Canadian poet, e.e.cummings, Elaine Stirling, glosa, medieval Spanish fixed verse, poetry

a glosa

trust your heart if the seas catch fire
live by love though the stars walk backward
losing through you what seemed myself, I find
selves unimaginably mine, beyond…

“dive for dreams”, e.e. cummings

~~~

The man with the kind smile is in the news today
for shame; I think his mother must be feeling
terrible. How hard she’s scrubbed what hangs in
public view. It’s not her laundry now, nor mine, and
yet I cannot help but cringe. This brine cooked up
by marketeers of low repute electrocutes—the wire
running through us all burns hot and white. It rips us
into trenches, splitting wrong from everybody’s right.
To him, the kind one, I offer this: while all seems dire,
trust your heart if the seas catch fire.

Let’s say, for sake of argument, that an institution
knows what’s best for you and me between the
sheets and who we call to warm them. The exit
signs are clearly marked; I know the rules,
you know who dominates, submits. Our excitation
knows no bounds…so far, so good, our sword
play’s in good fun—what’s this? You run to papa,
now? What’s changed? This wasn’t in our game!
The pain that binds us reappears, inside outward:
Live by love, though the stars walk backward.

Now we’re raining frogs and razor blades,
the “I would nevers” puffing up, their croaks
if not harmonious, at least, are sanctimonious.
Meanwhile, in stalls high up in marble halls,
stars of varying repute, nova, dark and dwarf,
fear toppling like you from their hard-won blind
heavens. What can I do to extract promises
from the many I have loved most awkwardly?
Not much. I thought I’d left you all behind.
Losing through you what seemed myself, I find

a vast, polluted land that someone promised
me, I can’t remember when or why. I have no
maps or guide. The bondage that delighted
us, our thumbing nose to pharaohs, seems,
in retrospect, like sweet repose. The failure
of success I feared most cruelly has dawned
an angry sun. What would my father say?
I made him proud and do so, still…perhaps,
these plagues I’ll weather and discover fond
selves, unimaginably mine, beyond…

~~~

I have taken some liberties with this glosa, a form that many of you may now recognize. The lines I’ve taken from e.e. cummings’ poem, “dive for dreams” are not a consecutive quatrain. I gleaned them from the larger poem in response to a current event, which, in its vividness and universality, addresses us all. Cummings, no stranger to controversy in his lifetime (1894-1962), probably wouldn’t mind.

© Elaine Stirling, 2014
Image from Wikimedia Commons