Subterranean Sestina
This poem was originally published in the 10th Annual MISFITS Science
Fiction and Fantasy Writing Contest (2008), for which it won in the
Poetry Division. MISFITS (now Convergence Events) was the name of the
organization that put on the science fiction and fantasy convention
CONvergence.
When first you leave the wooden loops of home
and spurn the beautiful leaves and grasses green,
you may not feel you have begun your journey
until the first appearance of the rock.
With its gray, cool vastness set against your foot,
you make your first essential turn
and magnify your speed.
You hustle hungrily across the earth;
and while the grayness never seems to end,
you know that it goes only as deep
as it needs to, and bears no pattern
but for the twinkles flourishing in the cracks.
And as you gaze down into those cracks,
you ponder those who call such depth their home.
Their clot and crumble hold a kind of pattern
not shared by guileless flats of gray and green.
The person who ventures far into that deep
will instantly authenticate his journey.
And so, with an unexpected leeward turn,
you gather speed
and set your foot
into the earth
and plunge past rock
until you strike the end.
Of course, it’s nothing really like the end.
Something inside your spinal column cracks
hard against the rock,
And while you suffer, some squatting beast that makes its home
in these unshapen caverns in the earth
begins to susurrate about some pattern
upon which you supposedly journey.
Pulling yourself together, you swiftly turn
to face this nattering denizen of the deep.
It hastens toward you with uncanny speed,
its skin and movements loose and coarse and green,
and comes to rest beside your foot.
This beast has neither proper hand nor foot,
but structures spatulate at each limb’s end;
and as you peer into its eyes of green,
its tiny, strenuous voice before you cracks:
“Overland creature, quell your speed!
Now that you have entered the domain of rock,
there is no returning along your cochlear pattern.
From here you are constrained to journey
beneath and through these endless tubes of earth;
there is no longer any chance to turn
and flee updraftily back to your home.
There is no rising from this kind of deep!
From here, your trench will only grow more deep,
for you’re in this a furlong if a foot,
and these catacombs will henceforth be your home.”
However, when this speech reaches its end,
you, in turn,
address the beast of green.
“I have no desire to live my life amid rock;
nor do I recognize this cochlear pattern,”
you say. “Good day.” And with all timely speed
you pick your path and resume your journey.
You stroll along, your fingers roughing cracks
and strewing lumpy chunks of auburn earth.
It’s not so grim down here inside the earth.
Your mind takes easily to matters deep,
except for when your concentration cracks―
and as you are yet light of foot
and fresh of breath, you much enjoy your journey.
You even sense a similitude of home
in the flecks of silver, red and green
that decorate the endless walls of rock.
At one point, wondering, you turn
to study them, suspecting a subtle pattern
encoded for some devious, chthonian end
meant to arrest―or perhaps enhance―your speed.
The scrabbling goblin equals your speed
as you descend further into the earth.
You wonder when the tight-wound course will end,
and whether there are limits to the deep,
and whether you indeed are treading some pattern
ensconced in ancient cosmic cracks.
The shimmering stalactites speak to you of home
in a natal language made of yellow, gold and shining green.
You speak back to them as you continue your journey,
finding tenderness you never knew in rock,
watching where you set each foot
and welcoming each winding, dizzy turn.
As time goes on, the angle of each turn
grows fiercer, and as you increase your speed,
you find yourself less stable, and your foot
knocks loose cascading clods of earth―
bits of rock―
until in the end,
you hear a boom, followed by three sharp cracks,
and as you home
in on the pattern
you stumble into a craggy cavern green,
round, dense, and situated deep
at the nadir of your journey.
But then you spy the object of your journey.
Between stalagmite and stalactite, free to turn
at pleasure, shining deep
with facets, spinning at erratic speed
There nearly floats a zircon, bluish green,
about a foot
from end to end
devoid of cracks
A perfect rock
that you resolve instantly to bring home
out of the earth
to complete your sacred pattern.
Yet as you reach out to complete that pattern
and mark the climax of your journey,
you suddenly feel the earth
turn
and realize you are already home!
For you’re in deep
twelve furlongs if a foot,
and here is where your wanderings must end.
Again, the shrill voice of the hellion green
unkindly cracks:
“From first to first, you’ve zeroed out your speed
with the gyrations of that primal rock!”
Above, its supple body starts to rock
in a disturbing and licentious pattern.
“You are mistaken!” you retort with speed,
“for there are many curls yet to my journey,
and in this very cavern, many cracks
that magnify my concept of the earth.
And whether I peer into them so deep
as but a foot
or twenty trillion miles, I will know again my home:
My explorations need not end.”
“They already have,” it replies in turn,
“And were you not so green―
So very, very green―
You never would have claimed that rock!
For it represents the final turn
in your cochlear pattern,
which finally has reached its end!”
At that, the zircon spins with blinding speed
and seals off the ceiling with fresh earth
and locks you in your cavern deep.
Whereupon, you kneel slowly to the cracks
that lie before your foot
and calmly begin the boundless journey
home.
You love your home, a place of sheaves and glasses green,
But often feel the need to journey through the rock.
Age makes you light of foot as on you turn
With speed through the impenetrable earth.
You never foresaw your end here in the deepest deep,
But you did foresee your pattern in the cracks.
It's really a double sestina - a beast so rare that there was no
reliable guide for creating it at the time I composed it. With an
ordinary sestina, one follows a folding formula in determing how the
six keywords at the end of one stanza are ordered in the following
stanza: 1 2 3 4 5 6 transposes to 6 1 5 2 4 3. But when I tried using
a similar pattern for the twelve-line stanzas in a double sestina, it
didn't work - keywords wound up in the same place after a ffew stanzas
instead of appearing once in every place, like they were supposed to.
I had to come up with my own formula in order to make the poem
technically work! That formula is: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 -> 2 4 6 11 9 7 8 10 12 5 3 1
Return