Highs and lows of Brisbane await Martyn Namorong
Guns and Viagra at the Wutung border

A pendulum plays a well-known rhythm

BY MICHAEL DOM

IT HAS BEEN A VERY GOOD Crocodile Prize year and I feel it’s ending on a high note for my own experiments into poetry. Here is another ‘final’ poem submission.

You can blame Peter Kranz this time because I was satisfied to let this particular project, a villanelle, sit until next year. Well, I think the momentum is good to continue with the title ‘A pendulum plays a well-known rhythm’.

To Peter – I’m sorry that the only ‘local’ characteristic about this villanelle is that it was written by one - Michael Dom (impenitent poet)

Movements between a left and a right swing
A pendulum plays a well-known rhythm
Moments between the ticking and tocking

An empty park-bench on a quiet lawn
A lonely figure bracing in the storm
Movements between a left and a right swing

Out at large, on and on the world races
Sometimes life is spent in little spaces
Moments between the ticking and tocking

Hearing bright laughter thru the gloomy fog
The distant baying of a hunting dog
Movements between a left and a right swing

Like a long lost memory towards dawn
In the absence of a shadow once known
Moments between the ticking and tocking

Life, long or short, fines a nominal sum
At the door to an unknown room knocking
Movements between a left and a right swing
Moments between the ticking and tocking

A villanelle started on 03/05/2012, finished on 19/05/2012, at Labu Station

Comments

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Michael Dom

Thanks for the prompting and the insights Peter.

I am liking the structure of the villanelle and look forward to using it again.

Peter Kranz

Congratulations Michael - another excellent poem!

The beauty of villanelles is that the repeated phrases lend themselves to ambiguous interpretations with a lovely musical cadence to boot - eg. "Movements between a left and a right swing."

Particulaly pertinent to Australian politics at the moment, or a metronome used to create great music? All based on the hypnotic swing of a clock's pendulum.

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