Lovers & Clairvoyants, Despairers & Thieves, 2015

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#bringingbacktheglosa, Canadian poet, Elaine Stirling, glosa, narrative poem, New Year's Eve prophecies, Silvina Ocampo, Spanish medieval fixed verse

Last year on this day, December 31, I danced a glosa, “there are no lost amigos”, with Jack Kerouac from his Book of Sketches. The poem still reads well, and much of it came true—as poems ought to, on this most prophetic occasion. This year, two female poets blend their say with mine. The first is Silvina Ocampo, an Argentine contemporary of Jorge Luis Borges. “The range of her spirit is much greater than my own,” says Borges generously of his friend in a preface to her short story collection, Thus Were Their Faces. Ocampo was also a clairvoyant, which makes the writing of this New Year’s Eve glosa all the more enchanting.

~~~

I have received it all. Oh, nothing, nothing is mine.
I am like the reflections of a gloomy lake
or the echo of voices at the bottom of a blue
well when it has rained.

—from “Song” by Silvina Ocampo, translated by Jason Weiss

I wonder if you’ve noticed, says the tall
thin man to me at the bar, that far less
oxygen is breathed globally on New Year’s
Eve than any other night—until the sex,
of course. They’ve measured it. We
suspend respiration from a fear of time
passing. Brain cells die from forced inebriation.
We greet the new year stupider. That’s why
I only drink soda and thousand dollar red wine.
I have received it all. Oh, nothing, nothing is mine.

He doesn’t know I came with you. You’re mingling
somewhere so I listen to his hypotheses.
They ramble from a scorched dead Earth
to why his mother shelled her peas
to Patsy Cline and BBC, no other.
He grabs my arm. Oh, look, the flake
is here! Comes every year, tells fortunes
by your posture. Snap! I straighten,
nearly wrench a shoulder. Great.
I am like the reflections of a gloomy lake,

deep, and only vaguely fascinating. I sidle
over, do not catch her name. She’s Kola Sami,
Lapp, born on some Arctic fjord. You’re bored
too easily, she says. All that you once could see,
that saw you back, you’ve stopped believing.
Wait around for others to establish what is true,
and then you preach it, divide yourselves
between the ones who drink and screw and those
who wish they could. If you don’t dissolve the glue
or the echo of voices at the bottom of a blue

mood, nothing will ever arrive to improve.
She vanishes into the crowd with a whiff
of salt spray and spruce. A Canada goose
calls to her mate from the head of a V
in the moment you appear. Let’s get out of here!
We drive through empty streets until nothing remains
of old anxieties. Above the lake stir Northern Lights,
phosphorescent green. You are lovers, I hear the Sami
say. Be that, no other, as an overflowing, unrestrained
well, when it has rained.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2015

The Walls You Think You See

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

Now be silent. Let the one who creates
the words speak. He made the door.
He made the lock.
He also made the key.

—Rumi

A tale I tell three times removed of one
who tried to sell his wares of hope and light.
To every town he went, the guards outside
the walls announced: We have no market
here. The light you shine no one will buy,
goodbye. The merchant saw the gates
were high; he knew no way of scaling them.
With options spent, he brushed the dust from
off his shoes and prayed. May he who irritates
now be silent. Let the one who creates

sketch me the plan of where to go with
these, my wares. One helpful guard had
said, we know what sells. You’ve none of it.
Consent to boredom, though, and near despair,
you’re welcome to come in. I’d sooner eat my
sandal straps, and oftentimes he did, so poor
he was, except for hope and light. By these alone,
he built more wares, then storehouses to keep them
safe, dreaming he could hear beneath the floor
the words speak. He made the door

in such a way that no one with a feeble
or despairing thought could enter. Then
the droughts arrived with floods and plague;
the people who survived fled from the dying
cities knowing nothing of the wares of hope
and light the gatekeepers had blocked
for all lay dead, save one, who with his final
breath confessed: A merchant once I turned
away. His wares, I feared, would cause a shock.
He made the lock,

I’ve heard, to stores of wealth an easy
thing to pick. They bulge with light; you
cannot miss them. So, heavy with despair,
the people traveled to the realm of him
they never met and found great vaults with
wares resplendent, lying unprotected, free
to seize. Yet not a one could reach beyond
the signs that read: Enjoy what you desire.
Who built these walls you think you see,
he also made the key.

~~~

Those of you who’ve been visiting Oceantics for a while may recognize the form of this poem as a glosa. If you’d like to know more about this medieval Spanish fixed form, or if you’d like to experience an entire book of glosas, compiled by Alain C. Dexter, please visit Greyhart Press here.

© Elaine Stirling, 2014
Photograph by Alistair Laming/Alamy
from Wikimedia Commons

Refunding Fire II: A Septime

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brave new business leadership, Elaine Stirling, form poetry, humour, metaphysics, narrative poem, parody, Ralph Waldo Emerson, septime, The Corporate Storyteller, the Power of Three, tonal realities, vibrational reality

“For the Universe has three children, born at one time, which reappear under different names in every system of thought, whether they be called cause, operation, and effect; or, more poetically, Jove, Pluto, Neptune; or, theologically, the Father, the Spirit, and the Son; but which we will call here the Knower, the Doer, and the Sayer.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The Poet”

(The first installment of the 3-part narrative poem, “Refunding Fire: A Sestina” can be found here.)

~~~

The tone read, you have reached the end
of conversation. Greater Diesis now says
you may proceed. With what, wha, wh…? Even
echo was giving up in my spiraling effort
to return fire to the Customer Service
nether gods with no hind end in sight
to guide me, I could only grope and hope.

Welcome to twenty-three degrees. We hope
you have enjoyed the fright. The effort
to speak without speech, to view sans sight,
I don’t care what anybody says—
the jar of fire surged—here resides the end
of lies! Don’t try that again, mortal. Disservice
the gods, what, you think you can get even?

The place was neither hot nor cold. Effort
to think sucked away out the bitter/sweet end
of where I used to have fingers and toes. Hope,
Pandora, last thing in the box, in dreary service
to hubby, Epimethius, fun-killer, myth says,
but do we listen? If none of us can even
fathom truth, what’s the diff, hind or foresight?

Sightless, imagination had come to my service.
Three surrounded me, only numbers uneven
seemed to rule in these chambers. No effort
conjured a macaw with man’s face; the sight
of Diotima, Socrates’s teacher, gave me hope;
the third, unsmiling old man, set of keys, says,
Call me Rock. How’s it feel to reach the end?

Pyth had warned me of the trap. Whoever says
the stupid earthly things, keep in your sight.
I nudged the urn forward. We’ve come to the end
of uses for this fire. We cook with microwave, hope
that eating raw will slow down time, even
though we must know better. Can you service

my request? Three pinwheels spun, a sight
that made my ears pop. Too few carry hope
for mankind; this once mighty fire can’t service
like it used to. Fire power, huh! You can’t even
imagine—I shut my no-mouth in an effort
to remember, this is a place of forgetting, End
of all ends, who cares what a paltry human says?

The guy named Rock jangles his keys. Even
Macaw Man rattles at that noise. Service,
by custom, requires exchange, calmly says
the priestess Diotima. To meet your end
you must give up the means. This no-sight
of humans creates and sustains no hope,
though to your credit, you are surrendering effort.

To hope or pray I can convey the sight
of fire’s service vanishing is beyond my effort
though goddess says, firmly, there is no end.

~~~

Please stay tuned, if you are enjoying this,
for the conclusion of “Refunding Fire”.

© Elaine Stirling, 2013
Image of Pythagorean comma can
be found at breakfornews.com

A Note on Form: The septime is a poetry form of my own devising. It consists of seven, seven-line stanzas with a concluding three-line envoi, 52 lines in total. As with its medieval predecessor, the sestina, a selection of end words (that don’t have to rhyme) repeat in differing order. While the sestina creates a spiraling pattern, the septime offers an experience of randomness, disorder—even, depending on your theme, chaos.

To create the pattern grid, number your first stanza end-word choices as 1234567. Subsequent stanzas appear as:
2nd: 7462153
3rd: 4175236
4th: 5346721
5th: 2617345
6th: 6753412
7th: 3521674
Final 3-line envoi:
1st line: 76
2nd line: 543
3rd line: 21

The Shadow Poet

Tags

Elaine Stirling, form poetry, Gothic, narrative poem, sestina, the dark muse

Image of Healey Dell Nature Reserve, 1989, by an unknown photojournalist

A Sestina

I took myself away in coach and four in fevered haste
too much of cold respectability, of late, I’d tasted
to a crumbling stone mansion on the Cornish moors
thereby the starched collar of an enemy to seize;
I call him Shadow Poet. For years, he’s stalked
& never answers when I ask, what do you want from me?

Hating most his lack of curiosity in what matters most to me
while pressing, ever present, and with bloodless haste
he doth oppose my nearly every word. Myself, I’ve stalked
him to his gloomy lair a thousand times, I’ve tasted
his o’er sweet and opiated wines in hopes to seize
the lurid secrets he withholds. He’s of the Moors,

I know, for swarthy is his cast and like the moors
I trek by twilight’s gloam, he faint and vague depresses me;
the more I try to shake him off, the more he’ll seize
all chances to compose love sonnets with rudely haste
in making sure I know they’re not for me. I’ve tasted
worse in chivalry but never been so crudely stalked.

And so upon the frigid heath at dusk, well-stalked
with nettles and dead briars I command the moors
to bring the Shadow Poet, to confront all that I’ve tasted.
He arrives, his moody retinue in tow, and stares at me
in willfulness, refusing to explain, he bides no haste.
The wind a lock of his dark hair does briskly seize…

and lifts it to reveal a mark like fleur de lis. I seize
within my heart a sudden pain; I’m shaking, stalked
by stories I have written, villains who in brutal haste
have killed their mothers, overthrown a nation, Moors
who, persecuted, hide in caves, unheard; it’s me
and them, my figments, who sweet violence have tasted.

Unsmiling, Shadow Poet speaks: At last, you’ve tasted
what you force upon me every night and day to seize
and what I have to say—what comes–can only come from me.
We speed each other’s vortices, d’you see? You’ve stalked
my poetry and I have robbed your time, upon these moors
it’s clear, we are each other’s dark, through stealth or haste.

This you haven’t tasted. He handed me a flask and stalked
me in broad circles. Let the fever seize you, for therein the Moors
will admit more of me, then you and I, we may compose in perfect haste.

© Elaine Stirling, 2012