A Sestina Elegy to the absence of Peace

“Elegy for the Vanished Peace”

A Sestina

The fields once resplendently arrayed in peace,

now sing dirges to the footfall of shadow.

Where laughter once dwelled, silence claims now home ~~

a silence too deep to cradle any voice.

The air tastes of ash, the soil of dust,

every road weeps, bewailing how to return.

~~2

We wandered far, seeking signs of return ~~

a cracked mosaic, broken remembrance of peace.

But all we found were monuments to dust,

and cities carved from sorrow’s shadow.

Each broken bell which once rang with voice,

now tolls for ghosts who never made it home.

~~3

What is a dream without a place called home?

What is a prayer without a path of return?

The wind still bemoans its broken fractured voice,

hymns once sung in the chapels of peace.

But even light now trembles in shadow,

and time itself dissolves into dust.

~~4

We mourn, writing our names in the drifting dust,

wishing, hoping to conjure a semblance of home.

But ink runs thin beneath the weight of shadow,

and maps forget the charting, the meaning of return.

Still, some stalwart, stubborn roots remember peace,

some chant - shout, beneath the frost, though a buried voice.

~~5

Come, let us not forsake that quiet voice~~

the one that rises strong, even from dust.

Let us plant again the seeds of peace,

and build from ruin a different, stronger home.

Let longing be the compass of return,

and love, the lantern in the shadow.

~~6

For even now, within the deepest shadow,

there stirs a pulse, a trembling voice.

It calls not back, but forward to return~~

never to the past, but bravely through the dust

toward a new and reimagined restful home,

where we might once again believe in peace.

~~

So let the dust be our cradle, not a grave for peace.

Let shadow birth a home. Let every voice

be our return.

.......

These six end-words - peace, shadow, home, voice, dust, and return - echo through each stanza, weaving a cyclical prayerful hope.

In serious reflection for the dead, dying and the suffering.

I sing an Elegy for humanity, which for all of its pervasiveness ...remains remarkably ill defined, stubbornly steadfast, fighting to the last breath.

A lament which remains a marker for textual monumentalizing - leading to a rebirth of peace and reawakening.

.......................................................

Sestina - complex poetic form of six stanzas, six lines and a three-line envoi.

1st: ABCDEF

2nd: FAEBDC

3rd: CFDABE

4th: ECBFAD

5th: DEACFB

6th: BDFECA

Envoi: The envoi must include all six end words: using three in the middle and the other three at the end.