• Week 24 • Rondeau

This week should have seen me write a canzonetta, but with all the travelling and workshops in Tuscany (not to mention the eating, drinking, laughing and new friendships) I haven’t been in the mindset for a canzonetta.
Part of our writing workshop yesterday was to write a rondeau, however, so I grabbed the opportunity to swap the two. I will supply a canzonetta on the date scheduled for the rondeau in the poetic forms list.
So…now the preamble is over, a rondeau is a lyrical poem of French origin, 10 or 13 lines with 2 rhyme schemes and the opening phrase repeated as a refrain.
I’ve followed the form of John McCrae’s poem, In Flanders Fields, which is 15 lines in total.

Beyond these last hours that funnel away
Your faces I cupped yesterday
In momentary fantasies that boat
A whole life by me, a single note,
Lies a mouthfeel, a space between the things I say.
The muse stalks the long slow bay
Of night and, flirt-eyed, she will lay
You right down amongst tawny wings, your heart afloat
Beyond these last hours.
Her pinions back, the underside cat grey
She will pin you here, home, amongst nettle and hay
With hands, slink-filled, languid. As a stoat,
A fox, a deer, you may try to arch and slip your coat
And run. But I promise I will return to play
Beyond these last hours.