Carruth, "Saturday at the Border"

Here I am writing my first villanelle
At seventy-one, and feeling old and tired—
“Hey, pops, why dontcha just give us the old death-knell?”—

And writing it what’s more on the rim of hell
In blazing Arizona when all I desired
Was north and solitude and not a villanelle,

Working from memory and not remembering well
How many stanzas and in what order, wired
On Mexican coffee, seeing the death-knell

Of sun’s salvos upon these hills that yell
Bloody murder silently to the much admired
Dead-blue sky. One wonders if a villanelle

Can do the job. Yes, old men must tell
Our young world how these bigots and these retired
Bankers of Arizona are ringing the death-knell

For all of us, how ideologies compel
Children to violence. Artifice acquired
For its own sake is war. Frail Villanelle,

Have you this power? And must I go and sell
Myself? “Wow,” they say, and “cool”—this hired
Old poetry guy with his spaced out death-knell.

Ah, far from home and God knows not much fired
By thoughts of when he thought he was inspired,
He writes by writing what he must. Death-knell
Is what he’s found in his first villanelle.



Hayden Carruth

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