Poets Pub - 2019 Poet of the Year Contest

Glory (Gadralneure) Wk - 4 (1)

Glory (A Sestina)

I

Battle done, I stand upon the field of blood

where early echoed songs of wrath-filled steel.

Now the crimson-hued mud grows white with ice

and from each corpse there flees a haggard soul.

The horror of the scene fades into night

as blessed darkness steals away my sight.

II

The day before, an army filled my sight

and grass upon this field instead of blood.

In hopeful fury, we hunkered through the night,

then rose at dawn, the sun reflected in our steel,

while priests in raiments dark insured our soul

and calmed at first that fear as cold as ice.

III

So on this tract of flattened grass and ice,

a mass of murdered men obscured my sight,

while frenzied hatred filled my steaming soul,

as on we plowed into that dance of blood,

which rained in ruby drops off flashing steel

and did not cease till late that fateful night.

IV

I, in this melee, fought for a full night,

'till battered, beaten, fell upon the ice

and watched the snowflakes melt upon my blood,

then saw my comrades die through clouded sight,

as consciousness was lost to angry steel,

and hopeless tears washed clean my cursed soul

V

The fighting's ceased, yet horror eats the soul,

burning bodies turn noon to darkest night,

falling ashes blanket white the darkened blood

that looks serene beneath the shroud of ice,

a canvas hiding slaughter from our sight

which covers now the slain and all their steel.

VI

The field is silent now with buried steel

and we, the victors, with a barren soul,

blank-eyed and empty at this joyless sight,

flee this charnel house, flee into the night

to warmer climes, away from red-hued ice

and leave behind our innocence and blood.

VII

At home now, cold as steel within the night,

my soul is damned, condemned to endless ice,

as all within my wearied sight screams "Blood!"

A/N - A Sestina is a fixed verse form consisting of six stanzas of six lines each, followed by a three-line envoi . The words that end each line of the first stanza are used as line endings in each of the following stanzas, rotated in a set pattern with the envoi containing all the end-words. The type of Sestina I present here has 10 syllables per line.