We talked about sestinas with Rhina on Mastery a good while ago. I posted this. Lo, I don't see why it's harder to use meter in a sestina than anywhere else.
This is written about women who were left without men because of wars. I knew many in my childhood. They became feminists and had careers and fun.
And nearly all sestinas are dull. I remember we found some which were anything but. This isn't anything special just an attempt to write one of the jolly things.
To Maiden Aunts
Too glib, to condescend to maiden aunts
who saw the world at war, as all at once
their world went mad and robbed them of their chance
to live their lives. No whisper or response
to make them feel like flowers. No romance
to sing their hearts into a fervent dance.
And if fate toyed with them, and at some dance
they met a boy who charmed them, maiden aunts
were far too frightened to believe romance
could promise them a future. Never once
did they entrust their youthful heart’s response
to love. It was too great a loss to chance.
They saw life as a brutal game of chance
where happiness was like a firefly’s dance,
elusive and capricious. Their response
was frozen. Thus the girls turned into aunts
before their beauty faded. All at once
they turned to books and study for romance.
The scholar aunts were teachers and romance
for them was knowledge. They gave girls the chance
to own their lives. They told them all how once
girls had no freedom, and their eyes would dance
when Eliot (George not Tom) spoke well of aunts
and Woolf (Virginia) wrote their response.
They saw their younger sisters’ vain response--
new furniture, designer clothes--romance
had trapped them in domestic dullness. Aunts
had independence. They each seized the chance
to travel. Correspondence traced their dance
through fabled cities, loving more than once.
They knew where history and drama once
enacted out a passionate response,
and on exotic tombs their spirits danced
to unfamiliar music. A romance
that echoed through the universe. A chance
to travel with the Bodhisattva aunts.
My favourite aunt once said that real romance
was more than a response to casual chance,
but rather freedom’s dance for captive aunts.
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