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