My First Villanelle

My First Villanelle

 

Give me metaphors, images, literature.

            (line from Fernando Pessoa Maritime Ode)

 

 

Give me metaphors, images, literature.

curse me, do not bring me down from this height

for it is in poems, my pleasure and my cure.

 

Ah! To touch love with a word’s gesture

be it in a dream, in pain or delight

given to me in metaphors, images, literature.

 

Take these verses. My first overture

to writing a villanelle is not a plight

for even this poem holds my pleasure and my cure.

 

Unlike Bishop’s One Art, I can assure

you, or Thomas’s Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night-

I, too, thirst for metaphors, images and literature.

 

I have taken on this new adventure

and will not give up without a fight

adding to my repertoire, this task, I now endure.

 

Awake in pain in the hour of departure

my heart’s dawn is twilight.

For my sake give me metaphors, images, literature

for only in poems, my pleasure and my cure.