Endechas

Paul Brookes chose the endecha for last week’s poetry form. The endecha (usually plural endechas) is a poem of Medieval Spanish Jewish origin, a lament intended to be sung. The stanzas are quatrains, of 7 7 7 and 11 syllables, rhyme scheme xaxa where x is unrhymed. It can be a full rhyme but is more usually consonance. I wrote one of each, a full rhyme endecha, and one using consonance instead. Since the poem is intended to be sung, it matters that the lines follow a rhythm which led me to write a third endecha where I tried to place the stresses so that the final eleven syllable line breaks naturally after seven syllables, leaving the final four syllables as a sort of plaintive echo. Given the origins of the poem, this seems like a reasonable interpretation.

Those who are gone

I can hear you in the wind
in the way the fox-bells chime,
the keening of survivors
the harrowing, dearth and the sorrowing time.

You were all around me once,
in the warm breath of the spring,
In the flight of birds, too high
to see their bright plumage, hear their voices sing.

You were young and old, lovely,
rainbows, storm-light in your eyes,
you sang the words, I listened,
to the ever-changing torrent, always wise.

Now there’s snow in the meadow,
no bird-sound, but all around,
the touch of dead hands wringing,
lips that murmur in the dark of holy ground.

Years turning

When will I see you again?
In the greening of the year
or at its turning? When snow
lies cold, unforgiving, and I wait, yearning?

For the years will keep turning,
russet red then green again,
and the road remains empty,
though my wishes throng the trees, leaf-stars aging.

To have wings

Black these cold and lightless days,
dirt-grey the clouds, sun rayless,
white the frost that furs the dead
leaf litter, that lies deer-scraped—brown and rotting.

I wish a bird would lend me
the magic of feathered dance
night or day uncaring, I’d
toss these sorrows in the sea—watch them drowning.