the sestina is my favourite poetic form, and I always go back to the way the spiralling form can reference all kinds of spiralling, looping, doubling-back subject matter. this one is just a bit cringe though. Evening. Thunder. To my writing-desk I return, Fruitlessly. A pathetic-fallacious cold rain falls. Behind the voiceless street-lamps, nothing reigns But solitude. Fourteen hours until day break, And the Raven's eyes are flecked with gold And ink running dark with proof of that love. "The world grows old, but we do too, love,” The tireless Shepherd to Nymph returns. “Midwinter gales strip fields of gold. But Vernalis caresses their seeds through Fall. Though time transforms, it does not break. The tapestry mended, the pasture reigns--” “--You say, but Proserpine, in her involuntary reign, Wanders the Fields, regarding the love Of the common man, the promises he breaks; And her chariot’s equinoctial return Heralds the tales of Carthage's fall, That ashen pyre in the city of gold. Such wealth is what ardor buys! Not gold, Nor mercury, nor empires to reign. The hourglass upturns, the static grains fall And we retell that age-old lie called love.” The Nymph speaks callously in her return, But turns her neck, to hide the break In her voice. So ravenous tides do break Ships upon the shore, cast by the setting sun in gold. Across the sea, the songbirds return To their summer slopes - white palaces reigned By drunkards and maidens who toast to their love, Their bonfires sputtering as evening falls. The core is rotten, the darling petals fall. Do May winds blow, intending to break? One warm day, Icarus donned his craft, and love Of the sky overtook him, that child of gold. Frozen, captured by its unconquerable reign Inches above the dark sea, with no return. My dreams show no break. It is there you return, My ink-dripped love, and as one we reign Over stanzas in the Fall and cornucopias of gold.