Sebastian Hayes

Walking out into the wintry fields this afternoon and rather enjoying the desolation (which is not really desolation since nature will recover perfectly well apart perhaps from some birds), I recalled the following poem written about a different place to which I no longer do return now.  I dumped the poem into the Rejected and Unclassified Poems ragbag but, since my thoughts were taken back to it, I  resurrect it.

The Ancient Beech

A disagreeable spot: each time I pass it by
Dark broodings fill my mind; I often go and sit
For hours on en against a tree in such a way
I can’t be easily seen, thinking of this
And that, I hardly move, just stare across the fields,
A very boring view, I wish I hadn’t come.

Ridges of ice: it’s always winter when I come,
A vicious wind at least, it fairly whistles by
The ugly roots of this old beech, the mournful fields
Stare back at me, a boring countryside; I sit
For hours here nonetheless hunched up, thinking of this
And that, unwholesome thoughts or useless anyway.

It’s difficult to see what makes me pass this way,
Plenty of other walks, and even if I come
Why I insist on turning off the road to this
Particular corner of the wood, why I stop by
This tree — what’s special about it? Yet here I sit
Hunched up against the bark staring across the fields.

The bleak and wintry sun over the desolate fields,
The snow-filled shack behind the hedge, the ditch right by
The line of poplars, even the crow that’s flown away,
I wouldn’t want it changed, not any of this,
The tree especially, the ancient beech, I’ve come
Because of it, the spreading roots on which I sit.

A knot of pain and fear located where I sit,
The roots are drenched in it one almost feels, and this
Has drawn me here it seems, against my will I’ve come
A wounded animal crouched here facing the fields,
Hunched up like this, in just this inconspicuous way,
And left its mark upon the beech and trees nearby.

Even now I sometimes sit facing the wintry fields,
Pondering all this, hunched up in the same way,
Somehow quite glad I’ve come, watching my thoughts drift by.

The poem is a sestina, not a particularly good example but nonetheless…  According to Frances Stillman whose Poet’s Manual and Rhyming Dictionary has proved to be invaluable to me and many other writers, “the form was invented toward the end of the thirteenth century by the famous Provencal poet, Arnaud Daniel”. Instead of rhyme the form uses repetition : the six stanzas, each composed of six lines, must all end with the same words in a different (set) order, where the last word of the final line of one stanza becomes the first end-word of the following stanza. After the six stanzas there is an envoi which uses the same six words.

As if this were not bad enough, Swinburne, a vastly underrated poet, went so far as to write several rhymed sestinas, one example of which is given in Stillman’s  book.

Sebastian Hayes