Acedia

Kenneth Branagh as Macbeth

Your courage borne from nothing left to lose,

What life is this, without an heir, wife dead?

And as you seemed to wonder, noble ruse,

Your executioner’s sword flung your head.

No pain.  Or one to end all tortured breath,

Brief candle, he, your towering enemy.

You thought it strange that he should look on death

As though it meant defeat.  Some irony.

Acedia, for Macbeth © Ron Villejo

Tess Durbeyfield

Nastassja Kinski as Tess

At early dawn, one moment lost in youth,

Still to become the maiden she won’t be,

How even then Tess knew in reverie

Her star was blighted.  Rendered into truth,

The ill-judged execution of the plan

Did misappropriate the finer such:

Assurance, none in time of doubt; and much

Love, if it truly were, from the wrong man. 

Where was her guardian Angel, who would come

But to ungently judge as wrong the wronged?

From Marlott she began, to Stonehenge will

She bear the last injustice from the sum.

It is as it should be, Tess thought, and longed

For death to raise her name to d’Urberville. 

Tess Durbeyfield © Ron Villejo

I loved reading Tess of the d'Urbervilles, the 1892 novel by Thomas Hardy, as a student at Northwestern University. Tess was as much a tragic heroine, as was Desdemona, and I found her story seeping emotionally into my poetry in those youthful years. This is a Petrarchan sonnet, and my diction is a bit stilted at times, but it still has quite a lot of sentimental value for me.

 

The Milk White Maiden and Heart Red Apples

(image credit)

When I saw this image, then read the note from Jerome Brown, I knew there was poetry in it.  To be sure, the lady is very beautiful, but just as beautiful are his candor and his demure.  Two months later, here is my poem:

Sir Isaac never told that tale of apples
     Fall by the dozen, and he never knew
The milk white maiden deign to gather them -
     Demure and innocent - as if she knew
The lean and bend and pull that gravity
Required of her, and knew instinctively.

No doubt, he would have formulated force
     Entirely of another sort - celestial, yes -
But nearer than whatever body held
     His head up to the heavens, as near as heart
Red apples in her hands, and whisk of hair,
And slope of bone, and cloth that held her fair.

The Milk White Maiden and Heart Red Apples © Ron Villejo

Pakistan Independence Day

A tapestry of lovely girls,

A generation swath of vibrancy,

                    Of range diversity

          And future life of Pakistan –

                              Traditional

          In choli and lahenga dress,

                    Perhaps gharara, too,

          Consisting of dupatta veil,

                              A tunic kurti,

          And salwar for below the waist.

What seas of color dominate the day –

                    What fierce and beautiful

          Courses from their bloodstream as red,

                              Its family

Of saturate falu and burgundy

                    And modest scarlet, too.

                              What violet

Beats like a drum from passionate a heart –

          Byzantium and amethyst.

                    Brushstroke of yellow, brief

                              In touches all

                                        Around,

Reminders of how lovely these girls are –

                    From golden to chartreuse,

          To brushstrokes on the palate such

                    As mustard, lemon, saffron. 

The boys, though fewer, complement these girls,

                    With colors more of white

          And range of turbans, caps – Pakol,

With a small brim that does not interfere

                              With their sajdah. 

          May they all be fierce warriors

                              Of light and peace. 

Pakistan Independence Day © Ron Villejo