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Another sestina. (Sestina form notes on "Alegria".) This one, mind, is slightly off-form, which strikes me as being either clever of me or really annoying of me, and I'm not quite certain which.
As notes on the origin of this poem: I admit to envy, of someone who still has the ability to faith. And feel, in my own way, a bit flawed and unworthy for being unable to do the same. But the aged eagle, as Eliot wrote, has trouble stretching his wings; and were Icarus to have survived his fall, he might not have cared to let the feathers of his life fall free again.
Some days, it just hurts too much to believe in anything. It's very strange, to know the truth and yet be absolutely unable to believe it.
This isn't actually a proper sestina. I have one departure from proper form, which strikes me as being ironic, and also strikes me as being the only way the poem could have been written. Pedants, please go to hell.
To give me wings
But in my knowing of real-
Whose gifts are flawed, gods
And gentle, true
But here, there is no faith
And gods: if this were real and true
Broken Sestina
There had been words
Belief, belief and faith
To know a thing to be real
And by that knowing, make it true;
Real as the workings of gods
And the gull's outspread wings.
Those words
Like a gift of the gods:
To see faith
In one who holds it true
In one who knows it real
Are true
And words
Are lost, and lost is faith
In gods
Who made each iteration more real
Enough to stir faith
And stretch the hawk's tired wings
To take words
In talongrasp, true
True and gods-
sent: To know that these words
Are, this time, real.
This time, these wings
Unfaltering, this faith --
No believing what is known to be true
Too often broken, these wings
To shake fragile pinions beneath the gods'
Eyes. Though this be real
The talons slip on the words.
To be folded up in wings and words.