Sestina: Poet and pen

Dialogue of the Poet and Pen: my first ever attempt at a sestina. the Poet chooses to speak through the sestina form. the pen is a loose form.

Dialogue of the Poet and Pen

For too long, idle lay my sweet pen
Expectant as the setting hen
Impatiently it said to I

PEN:

What injurious words have I wrought on thy?
Did I not cry to Hermes to make haste?
And thy delicate verses: bid him paste
On Helicon’s face, as sweet Libation
To soothe sweet Thalia, in true devotion
To Olympus muses, to whom all poet’s bow

And thou on Cupid’s folly, swore a vow
For thy lovely vainglorious Helen
Who, now, as in the past, violates
Sanctity, ruins the sons of Hellene,
For thy and mothers: bitter salty tastes
Of heavenly tears, to console sad hearts

Yet, I consoled thou with words sweet as tarts.
Shielded thy with allegiance to thy crafts,
Now I am forgotten, tossed like blight
Upon thy cape. Like Dido, left at night,
At heaven’s call, all mortals must follow.
And we wracked— full of torturous sorrow

Must descend to Avernus on Pyres
Spellbound by the banks of river Cocytus
With no friends to pay the toll of Obol
Till Hecate hears my wails; bid me, “Pass”
Led by shades, past Erebus, to Hades Divine
To plead my case, that my wrongs be redressed

And to honored Minos; I shall lament,
With deserving rage! My poor soul gives vent
Of thy traitorous arts, and days spent
In loneliness. Filled with scorn and torment,
For my grief, I ask thy verses be rent.
Never again to see the sun’s ascent



POET

how frail the pursuits of humanity!
Our lives in chase of immortality
Fearing with each decade that winged chariot
That claims our debt, and we, slaves to soil
Must send her our body, which we had rent
And our souls? Raised from these manacled hands

Falls prey at judgment, to works of our hands
You are nothing! A tool of humanity;
Made to enliven talents, you were rent
As we all are; for immortality
Did you never hear of the stick and soil?
They envisioned the wheel for the chariot

And how the gods soared on the chariot
While we must uphold their deeds with these hands
Send our brothers, and our blood to the soil,
Woe is this cursed sad humanity!
That ruins our works for immortality;
Which like all things are forgotten, and rent—

Into the winds; the price for shrewd time’s rent
All must pay, even that dark winged chariot
Fades, bows to the lamb’s immortality
For the redemption promised to these hands;
To raise up on high our humanity
Never again; we servants of the soil

Relying on her mercies, coarse soil—
From her, your majestic color was rent
And I: created by humanity
Our union soared faster than a chariot
Each verse, fed to us from the Muses hands
Did we not taste sweet immortality?

But I was drunk on immortality,
Tossed you for a beauteous child of the soil
And she laid waste to my heart, but your hands
Never left me, or this soul which was rent
Piece by piece, was picked up by your chariot
But fragile is this our humanity

Forsakes immortality for the soil,
To feel humanity’s tools in our hands
And our chariot? Like my verses; rent