Virelai

Paul Brookes chose the virelai as last week’s challenge.

This was the most challenging form so far. I enjoy rhymes, but this form calls for so many (nine rhyming end words for a poem of nine-line stanzas) that the sense took very much second place to fitting in a rhyme. The first poem, which took hours to get (sort of) right, proves the point that Medieval French poetry is best left to Medieval French poets. I ended with a six-syllable line because I ran out of enthusiasm to find a three-syllable line that would ‘do’.

Winter day-dreaming

Cold of a winter day
cracks stone, ice in the bay,
deep as night.
We beg the sun to stay
and chase the chill away,
beaming bright,
but my heart’s heavy clay
no comfort in the grey
of frost’s bite.

I wake in morning light
with all the stars so bright
dimmed on high.
Silver and blue unite,
gold-threaded; pure delight
is this sky,
broidered with pigeon flight,
swirls of frilled ammonite
hung to dry.

Ice patterns butterfly
the panes, frost’s lullaby,
hear it play.
Till spring sun, in reply,
bursts, with a gentle sigh,
buds of May,
nut-brown and nut-shelled, by
blackbird-singing brook, I
will dream winter away.

The second attempt proves a second point, that nonsense is much easier to write than poetry. It took me only a few minutes to write, but it’s rubbish.

The stupidity of youth

Youth fades too soon, alas,
old age will come to pass,
we all know,
to every lad and lass.
Tarnished all your strass
in the snow,
it looks so very crass,
dull and cheap as brass.
There you go.

When life goes by too slow,
we want it fast, although
at top speed,
adrenalin’s swift flow
that sets our blood aglow
we don’t heed,
and steer our course to woe,
to Thurles or Arklow
or Leed(s).

Wherever there’s a seed,
it turns into a weed
(I grimace),
of pride and senseless greed,
they’re just not what we need.
I preface
this with care, and I plead,
don’t do what makes you bleed.
Too late. Ass!