This is possibly the most complex stanza form I've ever used - I am not in a hurry to repeat it! The poem is syllabic and the line syllable counts can be analysed easily. In each stanza lines 3, 6, 7, 10 have feminine endings, all other lines have single syllable masculine endings. Further, lines 2 and 4 rhyme, lines 6 and 7 rhyme, and lines 9 and 11 rhyme.
Way back in August 1981 I wrote, some time after the event, "A Tardy Epithalamium" to celebrate a friend's wedding. Unfortunately the marriage eventually foundered so I have removed the names from the poem. It is written in syllabics using a simple alcaic form. I posted it on 27 May 2013; it is linked here.
--------------
Turned seventy, how life’s late-realized truths flock
Like airport-domiciled birds –
Wagtails, perhaps, or starlings – crotchetly ganging
At dusk, their static like words,
Mistrustingly, snappishly, clumping close, though sharp
To protect space, each one hunched to endure night’s draining
Of warmth and contexture, that relational faining
Sans which right judgement or instinct fail
And all meaning’s nil.
Man, though, can ideate both abstracts and concepts,
And truth’s in that skill.
Truth it is that an airport’s noised swirl is a type
Of man’s life: birthed, he’s at once
Found dazed at the terminal – that much-ways meaninged
Word for all sorts and the nonce:
A quo – as in law’s terminer or pedants’ glee
In terminology; or a spry termor clinching
Land for a term, even life. And eyes up, see inching
The terminator, parting what’s light
From night on the moon’s
Disc, tugged by Terminus, boundaries’ glared godling
Harsh-mouthing his runes
From his bust on its terminal. Then there’s ad quem
(For all things end): think of words,
Their back-end parts inflected in termination;
Then diseases, fever’s curds,
And policies, periods, all railways and roads,
Sooner, later, must terminate. What’s terrifying,
Though, is terminism – that fiat nullifying
Our headstrong dither at Heaven’s gates,
For contrition’s time
Is curt: missed, the Lord no longer wills our suasion;
We drown in screamed mime.
So, seize the hour! Teach straplings clear-eyed trust of self,
Sinewed by the Canon’s bans,
That, shipshape, the flight desk’s check-in’s voyaged trimly,
The boarding pass’s “you cans/
You can’ts” – life’s bounds already tautened by that slip! –
Stowed safely for pettifogs’ later sharp-nosed query.
Obliged to sunder hold luggage – the rattling weary
Belt claptraps it away – what’s left is
Predicate: tuned thought,
Heed for facts, context’d by the felt Unseen’s rescript,
“Do always the ought.”
Next loom the prim probings of the hand luggage check:
The rebelled mulishness of
Slapping one’s trousered metals into a barren
Customs tray, the all’s-lost cough
That, to parents’ wryness, the hand-swept scanner pings
A first (secret!) crush’s bangle, pocketed slyly
From the polluting world. Thus, teened hot faces scryly
Learn that “ought’s” frankful ownings have cost,
Though righteous to pay:
Thank Something when customs malarkey’s concluded
And you go your way!
Security cleared, its gates like Homer’s, what’s found?
A gewgaw Bartlemy’s Fair,
The departure mall’s furlongs pulsing with wantings,
Gettings, in recycled air,
The diners and duty-frees, the tannoy’s gonged notes:
All riddle self, ever grown or resiled in wholeness,
Its spousal trust sprung through man’s argy-barge from soleness;
But ’ware! drop-dead eyes’ blinked morse can tempt
Staid hormones to surge,
Wrecking commitments, the good fortune they girded;
Then nothing will spurge.
Despite which, too often, life’s but waiting – like war!
Stifling all urge to know “why?”
Then even the crises, even the three “atches,”
Turn chores, for time’s drugging sigh,
That’s once only, can be aspired or neutered in
But not respooled. The nervy clench fists: after ages
Their flight’s called: tremored, bags grabbed, age-breathless, like pages
Rushing, they clog at the boarding gate:
Filtered, they pass through
To the sky bridge now sutured to the plane’s stoma,
Untrim, thoughts gone skew.
Made it! Seats found, there’s now just sortings out and irked
Wriggles in cramped space. Then, straps
Must clutch, hostess’ demos done, and the plane bounces
To the turnpad. A pulse yaps
In your temple for, ashen-haired, there’s a hot pause,
And being’s possibles constrict to the fleshed present,
To bone ache, brain fog, which whelm though you gave years feasant
To existence’ tasks. Moving once more,
Your plane’s runwayed now,
Then – speed’s punch at your back! hurtling, wheel roar, helpless,
You pierce the sky’s brow.
For the last time? Who knows. Trayed food is ferried round,
Seat back movies damper minds
And all now pends, effectless. Truth’s truths (so hardly
Won) turn blurred, the binds and rinds
Of chemistry wroughting end to the body’s broil –
Agued cancers or blood’s anorexy, say. Eastwards,
Banking, night’s anteroom chasms the flightpath: breastwards,
We’ll enter – groan no “buts!” – this to grasp:
Finis, a child’s trust
In facts’ equity is our sole solace passing
From “might” to the “Must.”
====================
© April 2022 (first four stanzas); August – September 2023 (the rest)
Way back in August 1981 I wrote, some time after the event, "A Tardy Epithalamium" to celebrate a friend's wedding. Unfortunately the marriage eventually foundered so I have removed the names from the poem. It is written in syllabics using a simple alcaic form. I posted it on 27 May 2013; it is linked here.
--------------
Turned seventy, how life’s late-realized truths flock
Like airport-domiciled birds –
Wagtails, perhaps, or starlings – crotchetly ganging
At dusk, their static like words,
Mistrustingly, snappishly, clumping close, though sharp
To protect space, each one hunched to endure night’s draining
Of warmth and contexture, that relational faining
Sans which right judgement or instinct fail
And all meaning’s nil.
Man, though, can ideate both abstracts and concepts,
And truth’s in that skill.
Truth it is that an airport’s noised swirl is a type
Of man’s life: birthed, he’s at once
Found dazed at the terminal – that much-ways meaninged
Word for all sorts and the nonce:
A quo – as in law’s terminer or pedants’ glee
In terminology; or a spry termor clinching
Land for a term, even life. And eyes up, see inching
The terminator, parting what’s light
From night on the moon’s
Disc, tugged by Terminus, boundaries’ glared godling
Harsh-mouthing his runes
From his bust on its terminal. Then there’s ad quem
(For all things end): think of words,
Their back-end parts inflected in termination;
Then diseases, fever’s curds,
And policies, periods, all railways and roads,
Sooner, later, must terminate. What’s terrifying,
Though, is terminism – that fiat nullifying
Our headstrong dither at Heaven’s gates,
For contrition’s time
Is curt: missed, the Lord no longer wills our suasion;
We drown in screamed mime.
So, seize the hour! Teach straplings clear-eyed trust of self,
Sinewed by the Canon’s bans,
That, shipshape, the flight desk’s check-in’s voyaged trimly,
The boarding pass’s “you cans/
You can’ts” – life’s bounds already tautened by that slip! –
Stowed safely for pettifogs’ later sharp-nosed query.
Obliged to sunder hold luggage – the rattling weary
Belt claptraps it away – what’s left is
Predicate: tuned thought,
Heed for facts, context’d by the felt Unseen’s rescript,
“Do always the ought.”
Next loom the prim probings of the hand luggage check:
The rebelled mulishness of
Slapping one’s trousered metals into a barren
Customs tray, the all’s-lost cough
That, to parents’ wryness, the hand-swept scanner pings
A first (secret!) crush’s bangle, pocketed slyly
From the polluting world. Thus, teened hot faces scryly
Learn that “ought’s” frankful ownings have cost,
Though righteous to pay:
Thank Something when customs malarkey’s concluded
And you go your way!
Security cleared, its gates like Homer’s, what’s found?
A gewgaw Bartlemy’s Fair,
The departure mall’s furlongs pulsing with wantings,
Gettings, in recycled air,
The diners and duty-frees, the tannoy’s gonged notes:
All riddle self, ever grown or resiled in wholeness,
Its spousal trust sprung through man’s argy-barge from soleness;
But ’ware! drop-dead eyes’ blinked morse can tempt
Staid hormones to surge,
Wrecking commitments, the good fortune they girded;
Then nothing will spurge.
Despite which, too often, life’s but waiting – like war!
Stifling all urge to know “why?”
Then even the crises, even the three “atches,”
Turn chores, for time’s drugging sigh,
That’s once only, can be aspired or neutered in
But not respooled. The nervy clench fists: after ages
Their flight’s called: tremored, bags grabbed, age-breathless, like pages
Rushing, they clog at the boarding gate:
Filtered, they pass through
To the sky bridge now sutured to the plane’s stoma,
Untrim, thoughts gone skew.
Made it! Seats found, there’s now just sortings out and irked
Wriggles in cramped space. Then, straps
Must clutch, hostess’ demos done, and the plane bounces
To the turnpad. A pulse yaps
In your temple for, ashen-haired, there’s a hot pause,
And being’s possibles constrict to the fleshed present,
To bone ache, brain fog, which whelm though you gave years feasant
To existence’ tasks. Moving once more,
Your plane’s runwayed now,
Then – speed’s punch at your back! hurtling, wheel roar, helpless,
You pierce the sky’s brow.
For the last time? Who knows. Trayed food is ferried round,
Seat back movies damper minds
And all now pends, effectless. Truth’s truths (so hardly
Won) turn blurred, the binds and rinds
Of chemistry wroughting end to the body’s broil –
Agued cancers or blood’s anorexy, say. Eastwards,
Banking, night’s anteroom chasms the flightpath: breastwards,
We’ll enter – groan no “buts!” – this to grasp:
Finis, a child’s trust
In facts’ equity is our sole solace passing
From “might” to the “Must.”
====================
© April 2022 (first four stanzas); August – September 2023 (the rest)
